Relay Bike Share

Bike Share Initiative in Atlanta

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION PLAN

Shriram Lele | Citizen Participation | April 29, 2017

Who are we?
Relay Bike Share is the first
bike share program specially
designed for Atlanta to provide
a healthy and environmental
alternative for daily commute. As we know every day 2.6 million commuters travel to and
from into the city for work, which mainly includes driving personal vehicles which is not a
very healthy option in terms of air pollution and traffic control. Also, not everybody can
afford a car for everyday commute. So, our basic idea is simple, You get to the nearest
transit station, go to the city station where well have our bikeshare stations with bikes
waiting for you. Hop on one and go biking to your office, return the bike there at nearest
bikeshare station and do the same when you are going back home. This allows an
economic and
environmental
friendly alternative
for everyday
driving and helps
minimize other
issues the city is
currently facing
like traffic
congestion.

Figure 1: How it works( Source: Relay Bike Share Facebook page)

Figure 2: How it works (Source: Relaybikeshare.com)

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What we have achieved so far:
Bike share is a fun, convenient
and affordable way to commute
and explore (not to mention
healthy and environmentally
friendly!) CycleHop has been
operating right from 1997 and is
currently running 12 successful
programs in 12 major cities in the
nation including phoenix,
Orlando, Tampa, Santa Monica,
Long Beach, Beverly Hills,
Vancouver, Ottawa, West
Hollywood, Cleveland and
Louisville. All of this was possible
through various effective public
participation strategies which
facilitated our efforts in putting
together best suited bike share
Figure 3: CycleHop Initiatives(Source: CycleHop, LLC)
plan for each city.

We did the same fieldwork and interacted with the communities to come up with a plan
for Atlanta. We will see how we made people participate to help better their
neighborhoods through collaboration of their visions and our proposal.

Why Atlanta?
Relay Bike Share is the Atlanta chapter of CycleHop, LLC, a nationwide bike share
planning company. We at CycleHop incorporate 20 years of experience in the cycling
industry, specifically in bike sharing, bicycle commuting, and cycle tourism. Our goal is to
inspire people to ride bicycles for the benefit of ones health, spirit, and planet. We realize

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this by
partnering
with
communities
and businesses
to create
spaces and
programs that
encourage
people to ride.
We focus on
the following: Figure 4: Credits- Relay Bike Share

Planning, funding, and operating bike share programs for cities and businesses.
Sourcing bike share equipment and supporting clients.
Selling media and sponsorship to support bike share programs.
Consulting cities and companies

Before starting our venture in Atlanta, we connected with the City officials and the Mayor
Kasim Reed to analyze the need of a bike share program in the city. We looked at the
statistics and compared with other cities where we have already been operating for several
years and the results were terrifying. For example, only 4,064 metro Atlantans were
identified as daily bicycle commuters out of 2.6 million commuters total. The percentage
of biking commuters in Portland is 10 times that of Atlantas percentage which indicated
that more efforts are required before the mayor and the citys first chief bicycle officer,
Becky Katz, can call Atlanta one of the top 10 bikeable cities in the U.S.

Other Plans which helped us succeed:

When the proposal of Relay Bike Share program was put in front of the City, we
acknowledged that there are already plans and efforts being made to make the city more
bike friendly, such as the Connect Atlanta Plan which aims to put in a 200- mile bike
lanes across the city. This helped us analyze the different city areas and locations based on
their attributes like street widths, residential & non- residential areas, locations of MARTA
stations and TODs around it along with various educational institutes and where the
student population is highest. This was crucial to our proposal as it lead us to the 80
potential bike share locations all across the city.

But, this was just the beginning, as we had to do the permitting process for each identified
location for bike stations along with the tedious job of convincing various types of private

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and public property owners about how this project was going to have a positive impact in
the area which we will discuss further in the report.

Figure 5: Relay Atlanta Locations (Source: http://relaybikeshare.com/map/)

Mission Atlanta: The Planning Process

For all the cities, where CycleHop is running a bike share program, the planning process
has been the most crucial part. In Atlanta, it was even more crucial as we had to account
for all classes of people, their residences and their work places along with numerous
private property owners in various locations and public property owners like MARTA. The
entire bikeshare operation solely depends upon how one identifies the potential bike
station locations analyzing the need of that specific area.

The basic planning process was simple at start:

1. Identify potential locations based on attributes

2. Prepare case study for each location including technical drawings and surrounding
details
3. Submit the proposals, drawings and permit forms to the City and MARTA
4. Implementation/ Installation of bike share stations

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Heres an example:

But, permitting process with the City

Officials and MARTA was the biggest
hurdle. Since this was a completely
new concept for the city, none of the
owners as well as MARTA were
readily willing to provide space for
stations on the land owned by them.
We had to prove to these entities that
local neighborhoods need this kind of
service in the area and for that we
had to reach out to people to gain
their feedback.

So, the entire process was broken into

3 parts:

1. Major Issues: Describing the

key issues raised by the
planning process and any
potential controversies with
stakeholders, communities
and officials

2. Issues Management Program:

for this, the most effective method
was to maximize public
participation which made the
officials as well as the people
realize the need of this program

3. Consensus Building &

anticipating public concerns
and attitudes: This helped us Figure 6: Mayor Kaim Reed on Relay Bike Rally(
balance the internalization i.e. Source: Curbed Atlanta)
company outlook with
externalization i.e. public needs

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Reaching out to people, Effectively!
We wanted to reach out to public in a very
informal and friendly way. To do so we did
not start with a series of meetings and
discussions but offered them a taste of our
proposal and that too, for FREE!

The baby steps were:

1. Arranging free bike rallies for each

location from the closest MARTA
station
2. Weekend bike trips to nearby
attractions
3. Free memberships for participants
4. Free bike goodies and t-shirts for
participants
5. Collaborations with local bike groups
like Atlanta Bike Coalition to arrange
urban biking confidence classes for
amateur bikers.
6. Live demonstrations to how to use the
bike share program where we taught
people the basics like:
a. How to use Relay Bike Share
b. How to use the bike share App
to find bikes
c. Rules of the road
d. Riding in traffic
safely
e. Planning an urban
route
f. Winter riding tips

Many more were added to this list as the program started

expanding throughout the city.

Before doing this, we made a checklist to ensure that we

cover all the important aspects related to people such as:

Adequate public notice of public participation

activities and comment periods at key decision
points;

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 Timely notice of and reasonable access to transportation
information;
Electronically available information (e.g., via the internet);
Public meetings held at convenient and accessible times
and locations;
Consideration of the needs of those traditionally
underserved by transportation;
Additional public comment opportunities through
weekend meet ups and social media
Figure 7: Free goodies (Source:
http://relaybikeshare.com/2016
/12/)

Figure 8: Active notifications for members through App and

social media
Figure 9: Discount offers on helmets
for members (Source: Relay Bike
Share)

Spreading the Word

Out
Since this was a new concept for
everyone in the city, we had to
market our services and social
media was the best tool to use to
hit maximum number of people in
no time!

After the initial promotions at

rallys and meet ups in city parks and
Beltline, we created a Facebook page
which would have all the upcoming
events listed so members were
notified before time. The page is
open to all to join and mouth
publicity was our biggest strength in
the process of expanding Relay bike
community.

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We also created group on Instagram and Tweeter to put up interesting photos from our
events across the city!

Our Approach
For us, the most important aim to achieve was to get maximum number of bike riders, as
it would automatically explain the effectiveness of the program and its socio-
environmental benefits.

The plan had a time line which was completely dependent upon the initial response from
people and ultimately from the city officials.

Apart from this, approaching the city officials and the property owners was the biggest
task. Heres how we did it:

1. Identify the location for bike station

2. Do a site analysis accounting for pedestrian and vehicular traffic
3. Create interesting images of Before & After for the location
4. Make an easy to understand and appealing presentation for the property owners
explaining them how the bike station and increased bike use in the neighborhood
is beneficial for them.
5. Identify the stakeholders in the area.
6. Common stakeholders were street front retail shops, cafes and bike rental/ sales/
repair shops.
7. For the retail shops and cafes increased biking was a positive change as more
people would bike and walk around increasing their sales.
8. But for the bike shops, it was a threat since our bike stations would affect their
rentals and other services. In such cases, we collaborated with the shops in some
way, like making them our repairing and maintenance partners for certain bike
stations.
9. This worked out well for almost all the locations, for some locations we had to
move farther away from such shops where shop owners were not complying.

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The outcome
This entire process, right from introducing a new concept into the city to becoming a
successful bike share program was all because of active public participation and we made
it happen in a very casual and friendly way!

Usually, people dont respond to serious public meetings happening in a hall, but we
mixed it with bike rallys, park meet ups and weekend group rides along with promotional
offers, live demonstrations and some free goodies to take home and it worked wonders for
us!

Now, Relay bike share has over 75 operating bike stations with over 500 bikes across the
city and now we plan to expand more into suburbs collaborating with local bike groups.

Figure 10: Relay Bike Share growing in Atlanta (Source:

https://www.instagram.com/relaybikeshare/?hl=en)

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References
Creighton, J. L. (2012). Public participation handbook: making better decisions
through citizen involvement. Place of publication not identified: John Wiley & Sons
Inc.

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