BEND, OR -- Bend is a bike-friendly town, but not everyone who visits or attends school here brings their bike. The community bike sharing company Zagster is expanding its options in Bend; they cut the ribbon on a new downtown station, Monday.
Casey Bergh, Transportation Program Manager for OSU-Cascades, is excited about how the program will benefit students and visitors. "The annual membership is $30 for the year. The monthly membership is $15. And then a third option is, if someone is just in town for a few hours and they want to get a little exercise or get on a bike, they can rent for $3 per hour." Zagster members use a mobile app to access a code, which unlocks a bike. Bergh tells KBND News, "We're really trying to make it affordable for the community. All the OSU employees and students get free memberships through our sponsorship." He adds, "We just really want to promote that culture of active transportation, so we're kind of taking this step forward. For the university, I think, it's been beneficial, and really just providing a new option for folks to get around and reduce vehicle miles traveled."
OSU-Cascades partnered with Zagster, Visit Bend and the local tech company G5, to open the new station at Bond and Franklin. Bergh says, "One of my responsibilities is to provide better options for students to get to campus, and to get around once they get to campus. So, bike-share for us is a good benefit in that, when people take the bus to campus or carpool, they they can grab a bike at lunch to ride down the street and grab a sandwich or run an errand, or whatever that might be."
So far, there are 30 bikes available at three stations around Bend. Several Local businesses and organizations are involved in the local program and more bike-sharing stations are expected to open later this summer.
