New York City’s long-delayed bike-sharing program Citi Bike is now accepting annual membership registrations before it launches next month.

Annual memberships cost $95 and provide one year of unlimited free rides lasting 45 minutes or less. To register visit citibikenyc.com.

“For less than the cost of a single monthly MetroCard, an annual Citi Bike membership gives you instant access to unlimited short rides 365 days a year,” said Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. “Citi Bike will redefine what it means to get around New York City, and now is the time to upgrade to this fun, fast and safe transportation option.”

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The first 5,000 to sign up will receive “Founding Member” keys, ride exclusively during first week of launch and receive a $10 discount on three major bike helmet brands.

When the program gets rolling in May, 6,000 Citi Bikes will be docked at 330 stations across parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The DOT said it hopes to eventually expand the program to include 600 stations and 10,000 bikes.

Citi Bike had been slated to start last summer.

Software issues and damage from superstorm Sandy pushed back the launch date.

Will you be signing up for annual membership? Let us know below…

The announcement was made Monday by Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

She said that roughly half the bike stations were moved from their originally proposed locations after input from neighbors.

WEB EXTRA: Read The DOT’s Report Outlining The Bike-Share Program

“Citi Bike is a transportation system designed by New Yorkers, for New Yorkers,” said Sadik-Khan. “New Yorkers turned out and spoke out in the thousands to help design the network, and the system that launches next month will reflect that granular involvement.”

As CBS 2′s Tony Aiello reported, the program is designed to make bikes available at a low fee for short trips.

When the program gets rolling in May, about 5,000 Citi Bikes will be docked at almost 300 stations, including in the Bedford-Stuyvesant part of Brooklyn.

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Some residents there said they are looking forward to the bike-share program.

“To ride around the neighborhood, that’s good, that’s good,” one man told CBS 2′s Aiello.

“Great idea!” another Bed-Stuy resident added.

“It’s more easy to use a rental bike than to use my own bike,” resident Sherwin McEachnie said.

But others said they are already worried about the loss of parking spots being sacrificed and the upkeep for the stations.

“There’s gonna be garbage there. We don’t need this right now. This is not what we need,” Bed-Stuy resident Jolane Dash told Aiello.

On the southwest corner of 51st Street and Sixth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, docking stations for 59 bikes will overtake some highly coveted parking spots.

“It’s gonna jam this street up pretty good I would think,” one driver complained.

The mayor and the transportation commissioner said the Citi Bike project has been exhaustively evaluated.

“So is everybody gonna be happy with everything? No, this is New York. You’ve got 8.4 million New Yorkers and there are 8.4 million opinions about our streets and parking,” Sadik-Khan said.

Citi Bike had been slated to start last summer.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the first 293 docking stations have begun to appear. Most of them will at first be in Manhattan.

The DOT said it hopes to eventually expand the program to include 600 stations and 10,000 bikes.

According to city officials, the bike-share program will offer three pricing options. There will be a day pass for $10, a weekly pass for $25 and a yearly membership for $95.

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(TM and Copyright 2013 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2013 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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CHICAGO (CBS) — Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants the city to hire an Oregon-based company to run the city’s first large-scale bike sharing program, which he proposed at the City Council meeting Wednesday.

The city wants to offer people an affordable option for extra transportation, for instance, during the last leg of their trips downtown by bike.

As WBBM Newsradio Political Editor Craig Dellimore reports, the city already has a limited, privately-run bike-sharing program, but the mayor wants to team with Oregon-based Alta Bicycle Share Inc. to launch a massive effort in Chicago.

LISTEN: WBBM Newsradio Political Editor Craig Dellimore reports

The mayor is seeking to have 3,000 available at 300 bike sharing stations in the city.

For an annual fee of $60 to $85, people could have unlimited rides of up to 30 minutes at a time, or pay a small hourly rate beyond that.

Emanuel also wants a component to train young people to fix bikes.

“What I’m also excited about because, A, I had something to do with it and I made the suggestion; but it’s also going to be different than others. We’re actually going to have an apprentice program for kids to learn how to fix bikes.

“Kids in disadvantaged communities will get the chance of learning a trade and a skill that will be, actually, make them employable. I’ve studied what London did, I’ve studied what D.C. has done. No other city, at least of those two, have what we’re doing,” Emanuel said.

The mayor would like the program to begin by this summer.

Alta was selected unanimously over two other candidates, by a committee composed of representatives of the Chicago Transit Authority, the Chicago Department of Procurement Services, and the Chicago Department of Transportation.

The solar-powered bicycle docking stations would be placed about a quarter mile apart in congested areas of the city. The stations will be modular and mobile, and thus can be expanded or moved if necessary, the Mayor’s office said.

The program will be funded initially by federal grants intended for programs to reduce traffic congestion and improve the quality of the air.

Chicago smaller-scale’s “B-Cycle” bike sharing program launched in July 2010, under retired Mayor Richard M. Daley. That program offers rental bicycles at a number of tourist locations.

The county’s transportation department wants to bring Capital Bikeshare, a bicycle sharing program in place in the District of Columbia and Arlington County, to Montgomery.

The Washington Post reports that county transportation officials have applied for a $1 million grant from the Maryland transportation department.

The money would be used to operate the program in southern Montgomery County, with 29 stations in locations including Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Silver Spring, the Medical Center area, Friendship Heights/Chevy Chase and Takoma Park.

The county expects the state grants to be announced early next year.

A $1.3 million grant the county got in June is intended to establish bike sharing in Rockville and Shady Grove next year.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

The District of Columbia and Arlington, Va., have opened more than 100 bike sharing stations over the past year. But the National Mall has been a large void in the bike-sharing terrain.

The National Park Service has cited its existing contracts and concerns that the stations would encroach on historical properties.

National Mall spokeswoman Carol Johnson tells The Washington Post there are more issues to resolve but that they hope to extend bike sharing to the mall by early next year. Officials must still determine who will pay for the new stations. They are $50,000 each with additional maintenance costs.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

The intersection of Franklin Street and North Harvard Ave in Allston is busy.  Franklin is a little side street that happens to lead to a ramped footbridge that goes over the Mass Turnpike, which makes it an incredibly useful road for bikes, because on the other side of the bridge is the end of Harvard Street in Allston/Brighton.  It is probably the easiest way to get into Boston proper from North Cambridge.

So lots of bikes go along this little road, and more will be taking it in the future now that there’s a stand for the city’s new Bike Share Program a block away on Western Ave.

And it’s not a terribly safe intersection.  It had a blinking yellow light for years, so bikes and cars coming off of Franklin had to look for gaps in traffic along North Harvard in order to make it through.  So when the city elected to put a stoplight there instead, it made a whole lot of sense.

Here’s the problem: the light never changes for bikes.  It’s linked to a pad below the street so only something as heavy as a car will trigger the green.

Just to review

I have waited at that intersection many times.  I am usually there with another bike, and only occasionally with another car.  That’s because cars have little reason to come down the street.  Cars can’t use the footbridge at the end; most of the people driving down the street are coming from their homes, and there’s almost no through traffic.  But now, if I want to get onto North Harvard within the official laws of the road, I need to wait until a car comes up behind me and triggers the light.

And if a car doesn’t come along?  Well, I’ll have to run the light.  Clearly the city doesn’t care either way.

Other reading: Bikes and Red Lights

From today’s Boston Herald:

Mayor Thomas M. Menino blasts Nike over dopey t-shirts

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino is calling on Niketown to yank a disturbing display from its Newbury Street storefront, which boasts T-shirts emblazoned with pill bottles and sporting the words “Get High” and “Dope” — along with its signature “Just Do It” slogan.

Menino was walking along Newbury Street with his wife over the weekend when he spotted the T-shirts. One of them said “F Gravity.”

“I said, ‘This is outrageous,’ ” Menino told the Herald yesterday. “What we don’t need is a major corporation like Nike, which tries to appeal to the younger generation, out there giving credence to the drug issue.”

Giving credence to the drug issue? What the hell does that mean?

But more to the point: Why is Menino ragging on Nike instead of getting something done about things that really matter in the day-to-day life of Boston?

• Like reclaiming Downtown (Dresden) Crossing.

• Or letting Bruins fans watch Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals in the team’s arena, the way every other town in America manages to do.

• Or letting developers actually develop Boston.

• And how’s that bike-sharing program working for ya?

This is not to say that promoting drug use is a good thing. But leave it to the Back Bay Hysterical Society to police Newbury Street retail store windows, Mistah Mayah.

And concentrate on what really matters for the city of Boston.

Possibly due to the economy, rising gas costs, and the promotion of green living, bicyclists have risen almost to first class citizens. That’s a joke of course, but really the times are a’changin’. Cities around the country are adding bike lines and paths at a rapid pace. Even Republican Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood recently said “Bikers have as much right to the streets as anybody driving a car and I am concerned about [their safety].”  With a profile politician like LaHood on the side of bikers, it seems everything is looking up!

It’s not just the politicians, but new exciting bicycle sharing programs are finally popping up in the United States.  Bike sharing has been running quite well in world class cities such as Montreal and Amsterdam. Last fall we did a great article about the San Francisco Bay Area creating the very first US regional bike sharing program. They will begin the program within a year. We were even more excited to hear a program coming closer to home. Boston recently announced they will be implementing their own bike share initiative this July.  Their new system will be called the Hubway and will include 600 bicycles which will grow to 5,000 in the next few years. This is going to be a wonderful way to get around the city!

We can’t help but be inspired by the support the bicycle movement is receiving. It is wonderful to have people all over the country and in high places take the bicycle as a viable transportation option. If you haven’t already, bust out your helmets and celebrate your freedom on your bike! For ideas on how to celebrate, check the League of American Bicyclists Bike Month Guide.

The Daily Camera reported Boulder B-cycle will launch Friday in Boulder. Authorities say the 100-bike rental program mimics a similar sharing system started in Denver last year.

Members can pay a fee for an annual, weekly or daily pass during which they can rent any bike at a B-cycle station for up to an hour without an additional fee. Rides that take longer are charged $8 an hour. Renters are charged $1,000 for lost or stolen bikes.

A Boulder consulting firm will monitor bike availability and credit card information at bike stations through a cellular data device. The company also monitors other B-cycle stations in Hawaii, Chicago, Omaha, Neb., and San Antonio.

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)

Hub planners envision more vibrant City Hall

Boston’s Government Center Plaza, reviled as an eyesore for decades, could be transformed into an oasis where skaters could frolic, cosmopolitan strollers could sip cocktails and tourists could find relief under leafy glades, according to one architect speaking on the eve of a City Hall brainstorming forum.

Haven’t we done this before?

Boston Globe, September 2007:

Working with City Hall

Gallery displays ideas for redesigning the controversial downtown site

Mayor Menino hates Boston City Hall. So do a lot of other people.

Now six young, bright architecture firms are suggesting ways to redesign it.

Why redesign City Hall? It was much admired when it opened, back in 1968. In a 1976 national poll of architects and scholars, it was ranked the seventh greatest building in American history.

But tastes change. City Hall is now probably the least loved building in Massachusetts, possibly the least loved in our entire galaxy. “Hulking concrete fortress” would be a typical description today.

Set-in-concrete fortress is more like it, given the Menino administration’s Don’t Task, Don’t Sell track record.

Which leads to a bigger question:

Why is it that Boston just can’t get things done?

For instance, how’s that bike-sharing program (which has received $3 million in federal funds and should already have 750 bike racks, 35 miles of Boston bike lanes, and 500 bicycles at 50 rental stations) going?

Not so good, apparently.

The Menino administration’s too busy spinning its wheels.

Next year, the San Francisco Bay Area will be launching the country’s first regional bike sharing program! It’s intended to get drivers out of their cars and onto bikes—improving the quality of our health and air as well as decreasing our environmental impact.

The program sounds relatively easy so far. Users would register at a station or ahead of time online for a bike share account. They would unlock any of the program’s bikes with a credit card or pre-paid smart card, and ride it to any station within the network. San Francisco will start off with 500 bikes – gradually increasing to 2,750 – and 50 stations around Market Street. Within two years, thousands of bikes will be available at Caltrain stations in San Jose, Redwood City, Mountain View, and Palo Alto.

When it comes to billing, users will be charged by how long they check out the bike—unless the trip is less than half an hour, in which case the trip would be totally free of charge. For tourists or out-of-town people like me, the program accommodates those of us that would like to use the bikes for just a day or two.

We’ll have to wait until next year to see how well it works, but other places that have a bike-share program have already seen major success. Paris’s bike-sharing program, Vélib, generated more than 25 million bike trips in its first year. In Montreal, the one-year old program called Bixi has already counted three million trips (they reached two million trips just two months ago!). Gina of Autonomie Project actually travelled to Montreal over the summer, and she easily found that Bixi was the ultimate way to get around. “I found it more affordable than renting a car and far more convenient, as well as a great way to see the city,” she said.

The success of these bike share programs makes me hopeful for the one in San Francisco. Although I always enjoy visiting the city, I really dread driving and parking. Not including gas, a trip easily costs me an extra $20 in parking garage and meter expenses – and there was even this one time when I got a parking ticket.

Once this bike share program launches, I definitely plan on trying it out. It’ll save me money, give me some outdoor fun, save me from a headache, and help the environment.

-Michelle Thai

First, here is a little bit of history for the non-Washingtonians or those of you not familiar with the Festival:

The plantings of cherry trees originated in 1912 as gift of friendship to the United States from the people of Japan. In Japan, the flowering cherry tree or “Sakura“, as it is called by the Japanese people, is one of the most exalted flowering plants. The beauty of the cherry blossom is a potent symbol equated with evanescence of human life and epitomizes the transformations Japanese Culture has undergone through the ages. The date when the Yoshino cherry blossoms reach peak bloom varies from year to year, depending on weather conditions.

For the past 98 years, people from all over the world have gathered in Washington,  DC to welcome the arrival of spring and to share the special season with each other. The splendid cherry trees, the focal point of the Cherry Blossom Festival, are constant reminders of the strong and enduring friendship between the United  States and Japan.

At a time when climate bills are struggling instead of flourishing on the Hill, I highly recommend to explore the festival in an environmentally conscious way this year. Especially when this town is making it so easy to lighten the carbon footprint.

According to the Washington Post, our town has plans to create even more bike lanes in the District (on top of the new 40 miles of paths), conjuring up visions of an urban utopia where the center of Pennsylvania Ave. is reserved only for cyclists and the President’s inauguration. Metrobuses are running on clean-burning natural gas, and the list of U.S. firsts is an impressive one: Washington D.C. has the first LEED-certified ballpark, the first certified organic restaurant, and is the first city to implement a fully automatic bike-sharing program.

As Earth Day’s 40th anniversary approaches, the National Blossom Festival has picked a good moment to supplant a pretty cause with a truly ecological one. From adrenaline-pumping activities to sustainable eats, here is a posy of green ways to celebrate the annual spring event.

1. Take the bus: According to the iPhone CO2 Tracker application, if you drive approximately 200 miles from NYC to D.C. in a medium-sized automobile, you will use 61 kg of CO2. Taking the bus uses 16 kg of CO2. And in an era when intercity express bus companies like Megabus and BoltBus are offering Wi-fi, sizeable leather seats, movies, and $1 tickets, one could add stress-free to the pro-green travel argument.

2. Move your Butt and Bike:  For the entire 16-day festival, Bike and Roll is offering blossom bike routes for guests to see the full floral monty. Choose to ride ($32 per adult and $22 per child) the two-hour tour either during the week at 3:00 p.m. or on the weekend at 9:30 a.m., 12:00 p.m., and 3:00 p.m.

3. In the greenlight: At the 18th annual Environmental Film Festival in Washington D.C. from March 16 to March 28, each of the 155 sustainably-produced films is as powerful and enlightening as the next. The majority of the flicks are offering free admission across the 56 venues: Charles Darwin and The Tree of Life is being screened at the National Museum of Natural History; Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai is going to shed light on the Green Belt Movement of Kenya at the National Museum of African Art; and Division Street will explore what lies way off the beaten path in the lower 48 states when it is shown at the National Academy of Sciences.

4. Drink Greenly: At the end of the day, Earth Day is about celebrating the planet, so it’s only fitting that people join together to toast to her good health. The Earth Day Network’s first “Green Hour” launched this week at The Vrandenburg Café in The Phillips Collection Museum, where organic food and drinks will continue to be offered next Thursday, March 25 as well April 8, 15, and 22, from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. $1 will be donated to Earth Day Network for every libation purchased.

5. Well, this one is not really green, but If you want to add a little bit of fire to your festival, you may try cherry blossom fireworks cruise on the Potomac which departs from the southwest waterfront Gangplank Marina for magnificent views of cherry blossom festival fireworks

Watching the fireworks from the Potomac River is a truly unforgettable and magical experience. Imagine the illuminated Washington monuments along with sweeping views of the Washington skyline at a distance as you enjoy wine. The experience is only heightened by the presence of cherry blossoms in bloom throughout the waterfront along the Potomac River.

The boat will depart from the Gangplank Marina on the Southwest Waterfront while the sun starts to set. As the Washington nightlife comes to life at a distance, you can socialize, make new friends, and enjoy the views before returning back to the dock at the conclusion of our 2 hour cruise.

You will enjoy spectacular views of the monuments south of the 14th Street Bridge. We expect this cruise to be very popular with our members. Please reserve your tickets early before we sell out.

Date: Saturday, April 03, 2010

Time & Agenda:
- 6:15 PM Check-in starts at the gazebo near the main entrance to the Gangplank Marina at the Southwest Waterfront
- 6:30 PM We will leave the gazebo to board the boat

Address:
Gazebo near the waterfront at the intersection of 6th Street and Water Street SW.

If you follow 6th Street south to the waterfront, it will curve to intersect Maine Ave and M Street SW, and open to a parking lot that is the main enterance to the Gangplank Marina. The Channel Inn will be located to your right. Continue walking from here towards the water and there will be a covered gazebo

Direction & map

Obviously, this one is not free. You can register and purchase ticket here

Enjoy!!!

So it’s easy for me to understand why Boston is one of the most walkable cities in the world — who would want to drive? At HowStuffWorks, we even ranked it at No. 4 on a list of the United States’ five most walkable cities. There’s the aforementioned “T” and the miles of foot and bike paths.

But according to Inhabitat, the city’s about to become even easier to get around sans car due to a new bike-sharing system. The program, which should start next summer, will feature bikes at 290 stations around the city. Swipe your credit card at a station, score some wheels while you need them, then dock the bike at the station closest to you when you’re done.

A similar system in Montreal isn’t especially cheap — about $78 per year or $5 per day — but that sounds fairly economical when stacked up against car ownership or regular public transport. And considering you don’t need to tote around heavy locks and chains (or your wheels and fancy seat for that matter), it’s probably worth it for the avid urban biker.

More bikes, more walking:
Top 5 Ways to Save the Planet with Bicycles
5 Walkable Cities
What’s a walk score?
Vauban, Germany: Suburban Life Without Cars
“Intended Users” and Oberstar’s Bike Bill