Residents of two buildings owned by Jawl Properties will have a new way to get around starting Tuesday when the company activates an automated bike-sharing program.
Director of property management Karen Jawl confirmed Friday that 20 shareable bikes will be available — 10 at its downtown Atrium and 10 at Selkirk Waterfront, 2940 Jutland Rd. — with the establishment of its private, high-tech bike share network.
“It’s just something we wanted to do for our tenants,” said Jawl, whose company has partnered with nextbike, the Germany-based bike sharing company with 35,000 bikes available in 23 countries.
The timing was ideal for the company to implement the system, which lets employees and tenants borrow a bike free of charge for up to three hours.
“They do city bike-sharing networks like you’d see in Europe, or in Montreal or Vancouver, so we just needed to adapt the back-end of their software,” said Jawl.
To check one of the blue bicycles in or out, riders can use a mobile app or onboard computer that unlocks a bicycle once you’ve been authorized to receive an unlock code.
Additional time can be purchased for $5-per-hour using a credit or debit card.
Depending on how the initial rollout goes at the Atrium and Selkirk, the private bike-share network could be expanded, Jawl said.
“It was just seeing the way the city has been going in terms of being so bike-friendly,” she said, explaining the company’s motivation. “We’re also seeing an increase in parking costs and traffic pressure downtown.”
Despite our recent inclement weather, Jawl said they determined mid-March was as good a time as any to launch the system.
“I think there will be a slow uptake because of the time of year, which was somewhat intentional,” she said, noting it gives them time to work out any kinks when there isn’t likely to be huge demand all at once.
Whether Jawl will jump on one herself remains to be seen, she said with a laugh.
“I bike with my son to school in the morning some days, but I’m not an avid cyclist by any means.”
While there are no immediate plans for the City of Victoria to implement a public variation on the bike-sharing model, Mayor Lisa Helps gave the Jawl’s initiative a thumbs-up.
