How Giving Bike Share Prime Real Estate Attracts More Riders

It was outside the Birchwood where I first noticed the odd psychological effect of bike share stations. I was sitting sipping a coffee in the sunshine, watching people ride and walk up and down the street, and the new kiosk made quite an impression before the front door. As couples walked past, they would stop and gaze at it for a few key seconds.

“Hm, maybe someday I’ll try that out,” I heard someone say.

“How do they work,” couples would murmur to each other

The key thing for me was that these were people, so I thought, that would never bike around South Minneapolis on their own. Even if you never use it, the Nice Ride station breaks down a psychological barrier between us and them, the bicycle people and the rest of us. It offers a gateway into an intimidating world, an exciting potential that is really helpful for forwarding conversations about urban bicycling past a divisive impasse.

And unlike almost every other small business, the Birchwood puts its bike rack and its Nice Ride station right before the front door, taking up (at least) two prime parking spots. That sends a message of welcoming, and amplifies the feeling of comfort that becomes so crucial to actually changing behavior.

According to Nice Ride director Bill Dossett, and the other staff that chatted with us at length, some stations in seemingly sensible locations — say by a LRT stop or along a bike route — have low performance because of their atmospherics. If the stop is in the middle of a large parking lot, tucked into an alley, or at a chaotic intersection, people are far less likely to use it.