Where we B...

With summer coming to an end and today being the last day of August, we thought we would give you an update on some statistics that are pretty awesome. They definitely are putting a smile on our face this Friday morning. Hopefully, they will do the same for you.

Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend!

PS- Congrats to our B-cycle leader, Paul Young for reaching 2,000 miles this week for the year. Amazing!

Total Number of Trips: 52,182

Total Number of Miles: 203,241.08

Total Number of Annual Members: 1,328

Total Number of Calories burned: 8,999,250

Total Carbon Offset: 213,732 lbs

Total Gallons of Gas Saved: 9,999.46

Total Dollars Saved: $35,598.08

Update: These numbers were calculated on Tuesday so we have definitely passed the 9 million mark on calories and 10,000 gallons of gas saved. Congrats!

You ALL deserve a medal for this! :)

 

 

 

B-fit, B-green, B-cycle

Meet the Staff Series: Part 2

Meet Zach. He is a bit of a renaissance man here doing a little bit of everything from mechanical work, customer service, sales, and acting (you may have seen him on tv or in te paper). He has been with us pretty much since the beginning and we are glad that he is part of our team, especially since he photographs so well and looks so pretty on camera. :)

Introducing Zach Gonzales

     Zach Gonzales’ interest in bicycles sparked when his Uncle Josh, an avid triathlete, encouraged him to enter The Dam 09 with him.  “I picked up a cheap bike at a garage sale and started riding,” Gonzales said. Swimming and running aspects of the triathlon did not interest the 16 year old but he fell in love with cycling. “I would say I have participated in close to 100 races and have won a handful of them,“ Gonzales said. 

     Peers credit Gonzales with above average mechanical skills and an eye for detail in his repairs.  “Once I became a bike racer, I committed myself to learning everything I could about bikes and how to work on them,” Gonzales said.  The summer following graduation from MacArthur High School, he took a job at a local bike shop and had the good fortune of working with Fernando Guajardo, an experienced mechanic. Gonzales reflects, “I got lucky when I met Fernando as he took me under his wing and taught me the basics I needed to know to work in a bike shop.” The other avenue in which he learned was by racing with pro riders. “I watched how the pros worked on their bikes and then integrated the skills into my work,” Gonzales said.

     A patient person with a big heart, Gonzales has begun informal teaching sessions when middle school children enter the B-cycle headquarters with a flat tire.  “The kids often cannot afford a new tube, so I pull out a patch kit and show them how to do the repair.  They love it!”

Zach, we are glad you are on our team! 

Submitted by Bonnie Simons

 

B-fit, B-green, B-cycle

Meet the Staff Series: Part 1

Do ever check out a b-cycle at a station and wonder who keeps the bird poop of the seats and handle bars, who cleans the dirt and grafitti off the stations, who keeps the tires filled? Well, that would be our fabulous Worker B's! They rock. The program could not run for one single minute without them. We decided that our members should get to know these amazing people a little better so our resident professional tour guide, Bonnie Simons, has been interviewing our staff. Below is her interview with our Service Manager, Caleb Choate. Get to know hima  little better. Trust us, he rocks.

[Caleb Choate, Maintenance Supervisor of San Antonio B-cycle, had been working for Bike World for four months when he saw an internal memo recruiting applicants to manage the non-profit rogram, San Antonio Bike Share.  “I felt it would be an opportunity to do something good for the community,” Choate said. 
 

Growing up in Bridge City, Texas, near the Louisiana border, Choate spent long hours working alongside his Dad working on car and truck repairs.  In high school, a good friend began racing road bikes and Choate’s focus switched from cars to bikes.  “It is the mechanical aspect that has always drawn me to bikes.  I never raced or watched friends race….I just loved working on the bikes,” Choate said.  It is the taking apart, the rebuilding and the cleaning of the bikes that he enjoys.

“At the time the program kicked off in March of 2011, the road cyclists were heading outside of town to ride, the mountain bikers were in the parks, but there was not a large bike culture downtown.  There is now!  I have seen the number of riders triple in the last year, and it has been exciting to see!” Choate said.

Asked if he has a dream for San Antonio Bike Share, Choate said, “My dream would be to see it grow and expand into the greenways, the universities, all over the city of San Antonio.  People could reach their destination by choosing B -cycle, and hopping from station to station!” 

Let’s all hope this dream comes true!]


B-fit, B-green, B-cycle

Spotcycle

Our staff recently came across a new smart phone app, called Spotcycle. It is pretty amazing. It is basically like a international database/network for all bike share programs. Pretty cool! Below is a little more about it that we found on its website. Click on the picture to head to its website, learn more, and sign up for FREE! While you're at it, add in your favorite b-cycle routes to share with others.

Here's Spotcycle in a nutshell:

BIKE stations status and location

• Locate bike stations on the bike share system.
• List the ten nearest bike stations.
• Display the bike and bike dock availability for each bike station.
• Group stations into favorites for quick access.

CREATE personalized bike routes*

• Use your smartphone's GPS feature to record and map out your bike route.
• Annotate points of interest to your bike route.
• Save your bike routes to your Spotcycle account for later use.
• Edit your bike routes or add descriptions to them.
• Add descriptions to your annotations.
• Class your bike routes and annotations into pre-defined categories.

SHARE your routes

• Share your saved bike routes with the Spotcycle community and social network via Facebook, Twitter, or email.
• Or, keep your bike routes private to edit them, and then share them when they're ready!

EXPLORE the city with shared bike routes

• Ride out bike routes shared by Spotcycle members.
• Add your own bike routes to the Spotcycle community.
• Search for bike routes by name, annotations, category or by username.
• Rate bike routes using the star meter.
• Try out Top Rated and Top Viewed bike routes from the Top Path tab.
• Bookmark interesting bike routes to your Spotcycle account and access them from the Bookmark tab.

B-fit, B-green, B-cycle

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

With all of the new solar powered B-stations, our plugin AC compressor that we use to fill flat tires doesn't work. Obviously, not having the ability to fill tires at the stations is a huge inconvenience. Worker B's have to checkout the bikes and take them to the Hub to fill them, which means that those bikes are not circulating in the system. Typically, we can fill on site so it is quick and bikes never have to be taken out of circulation.

While trying to come up with a solution, a brilliant idea was conceived to use a SCUBA tank. They start out at over 2100 lbs. which lets us fill tires at the all of the new solar powered stations for 3 weeks! How cool is that? In this case, necessity is definitely the mother of invention.
Big THANKS to Dive World on West Ave. for helping with the setup!

***If anyone has a large capacity aluminum tank they don't use anymore, we could definitely  put it to good use.

B-fit, B-green, B-cycle... And B-resourceful!

Updated Map

Here is our newest map with all 25 stations. You can go to our website to download and print a PDF version if you would like.

And 2 More Makes 25.

Yesterday we installed our 2 newest stations. They look great, the locations are awesome, and everything went smoothly. Go check them out when you have a chance and add them into your b-cycling route!

Check out more pictures of the installation process at the Weston Center here...

B-fit, B-green, B-cycle

Half Way to our Density Goal

San Antonio B-cycle will be installing 2 more stations next week making our station total 25 and bike count close to 250. This is huge, considering our goal is to have 50 stations and 500 bikes and we will be getting 7 more stations at the Missions in late Fall!

The key to success for bike share in any city is the density of stations and ease of use. The greater the number of stations, the greater connectivity of the system to provide more bikes to San Antonians.

Our 2 new stations will be installed August 7th and 8th at the Weston Center and Roosevelt Park. These are locations that we identified as much needed expansion sites. Our Roosevelt Park station has great connectivity to the Mission Reach and our stations there and the Weston Center station is close to the Riverwalk, municipal offices, shopping and restaurants, not to mention the connectivity that it will help with.

Go check out these stations next week!


Click here to see locations in comparison to others.



B-fit, B-green, B-cycle