New Divvy station? Post it here.

I'd be interested to hear about new stations as they pop up.

I was excited to find a new station only 2 blocks from my house last night (a block closer than the planned location):

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Permalink Reply by pat 5.5mi on September 19, 2013 at 11:17am

broadway and cornelia

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Permalink Reply by Thunder Snow on September 20, 2013 at 2:53am

Yep, plus Clark/Schiller, Halsted/Roscoe, Halsted/Waveland, Broadway/Barry.

From today's Divvy Facebook feed: "Seven new stations planned for today:

Leavitt St & Armitage Ave

Damen Ave & Charleston St

Southport Ave & Clybourn Ave

Sheffield Ave & Wrightwood Ave

Lincoln Ave & Eastwood Ave

Clarendon Ave & Gordon Terrace

Lakeview Ave & Fullerton Pkwy."

(Weather conditions may affect this list, I'm guessing.)

pat 5.5mi said:

broadway and cornelia

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Permalink Reply by Thunder Snow on September 20, 2013 at 7:55am

Yep. We're working all this weekend, I hear. It's a combination of promised deadlines for the first 300 stations, plus leases that are expiring on some of the workspaces we occupy. Gotta get it done now.

h' 1.0 said:

Is there a big push now to get them in by a certain deadline?

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Permalink Reply by Apie (11) on September 20, 2013 at 8:43am

Nice one by my building at Monroe and Franklin WOOHOO!! I didn't know one was going up there so i'm pleasantly surprised.

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Permalink Reply by Duppie on September 20, 2013 at 1:29pm

A wholly uneducated guess: (federal) funding for the remaining bikes and stations won't be available until 2014.

h' 1.0 said:

Is there a way to tell from the current map which are planned for this year?

What is the reason for the deadline/cutoff exactly.... snow on the ground? Promises to aldermen?

Thunder Snow said:

Yep. We're working all this weekend, I hear. It's a combination of promised deadlines for the first 300 stations, plus leases that are expiring on some of the workspaces we occupy. Gotta get it done now.

h' 1.0 said:

Is there a big push now to get them in by a certain deadline?

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Permalink Reply by Thunder Snow on September 20, 2013 at 3:09pm

h' & Duppie: I'm guessing here as well, as I've never seen the contract between Alta Bike Sharing & the City of Chicago (why would I have access to that? as interesting reading as it might be...). Most public works contracts, like new roads or bridges...or bike stations...usually have a deadline attached, with financial penalties if the contractor (Alta) takes too long to accomplish a certain goal and possibly bonus payments if something takes less time than originally planned. Things seem ramped up lately and I'm surmising this is the main reason, though I'm sure snow and ice can slow down the 301st-400th station deployment, so hustling a bit before the weather turns wicked is probably wise. And I'm guessing that the earlier that Divvy can shed some of the deployment overhead (rental space in a gigantic warehouse, 4 big rental flatbed trucks, several rented forklifts, lots of people on payroll to assemble parts and deploy stations) the better it will be financially for the system.

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Permalink Reply by Thunder Snow on September 21, 2013 at 11:37am

Today we installed:

Polk & May (UIC Little Italy)

Taylor & Wood (Medical Center)

53rd & Kimbark

Leavitt & Hirsch

Division & Western

8th & Wabash

They aren't all networked yet (as of 5:30 PM Saturday) but I expect they will all be live by this evening or tomorrow morning.

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Permalink Reply by Thunder Snow on September 21, 2013 at 1:05pm

Well, Division/Western is live now. It's on the south side of Division just west of Western Avenue. You're right, Western is very sparse for Divvy stations. I wonder if that was a conscious decision by CDOT, that Western either wasn't very good for cycling, or they just want to keep it clear in case they run BRT up that street, like Ashland. If you detour east a bit to Damen, you get many more intermediate stations from the southwest side to the northwest, if that's an option.

Ogden/Congress is in kind of an empty area, but it kind of makes sense if you see it's shared by students at Malcolm X College as well as students at Rush, UI and workers and visitors to the north end of the Medical District.

Glad 24th/Western is getting use; I delivered the station to that location on a flatbed truck. I kind of wish CDOT hadn't sited it directly in front of the building entrance, but off to one side or the other. But no one asks our opinion.

Hopefully, this first roll out of stations will be only the beginning of covering the entire city. I think Chicago did many things right with Divvy. I've been reading the San Francisco version of Streetsblog, about how their new bike sharing system has relatively few stations, all in the financial district and none in the neighborhoods, as well as small pockets of stations in vastly isolated areas in the south bay and peninsula. Apparently, few people are signing up in SF, as there aren't enough stations to be useful. And if no one signs up, they won't be able to expand. Classic chicken-or-egg conundrum. I'm glad Chicago avoided this by starting with 400 planned stations right from the start.