The City of Medford has received a $250,000 grant to expand and maintain Bluebikes stations within the city. The city announced it had received funding from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation in an Aug. 14 press release.
According to Medford Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn, the city’s traffic and transportation department applied for the grant, and the city was notified last month that they would receive funding.
“Our Traffic Transportation Director [applied] for a MassDOT Shared Streets and Spaces Grant through their program, and in August, we found out that we were awarded $250,000 from that state grant to expand and maintain our Bluebike network,” Lungo-Koehn told the Daily. “That’s going to add an additional three stations.”
While grants like the one Medford received are usually limited to capital fees or one-time improvement and construction funds, this year MassDOT allowed cities to apply for operations fees, which support ongoing maintenance costs. Medford’s Director of Traffic and Transportation, Todd Blake, explained that the city’s growing Bluebikes network requires more funding for regular upkeep.
“Because we’re expanding so fast, the operating fees go up [with] every station we add,” Blake said. “Each month that goes by, each year that goes by, our operating fees are more and more.”
Unlike Boston, Cambridge, Somerville and Brookline — the first four cities to use Bluebikes — Medford has to pay maintenance fees to operate the service and its website. This presents a challenge to cities hoping to add Bluebikes service.
“Typically, smaller cities [and] towns don't have enough of those operating funds, so any little bit helps,” Blake said.
He noted that other cities, as well as the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization, helped Medford apply to receive funding that could be used for both upkeep and new station constructions.
“The cities and towns that are a part of Bluebike, as well as the MAPC and CTPS, all advocated for MassDOT to consider allowing us to apply for some operational fees as well as capital fees, because we're all in similar boats,” Blake said. “The system really works better if all of us are doing successfully, all the cities and towns in the region, … so I can't say enough about Somerville, Cambridge, Everett, Malden [and] Arlington.”
Lungo-Koehn commended Blake for his work securing the grant. “Todd Blake has been working hard on this for years, and we can see the fruits of his labor — especially over the last couple years — as we seem to be implementing two, three or four [stations] every six months,” she said.
The city has recently implemented three new Bluebikes stations, located at Carr Park, Medford High School and Governors Avenue at Lawrence Road. The city’s 15th station, located at Winthrop Circle, is slated to open in October.
Now, the city is set to begin the process of determining where the next Bluebikes stations will be installed.
“Considering the fact that we just got this grant a couple of weeks ago, we haven't identified specifically where the next three [stations] will go,” Lungo-Koehn said. Blake explained that multiple factors go into deciding where new stations should be constructed.
“There’s several different criteria, the biggest being spacing them appropriately throughout the city,” Blake said. “We started at the southern end of the city, because that was where the existing Bluebike network in Somerville existed. … It made sense to expand from the existing network because if you choose somewhere too far, it becomes an island and it’s not necessarily usable for folks.”
For now, according to Blake, the city is trying to maintain roughly half-mile spacing between bike stops in residential and business districts. “It’s a way for us to expand within our resources and try to hit each neighborhood appropriately,” he said.
Lungo-Koehn and Blake noted that Tufts has also helped expand the Bluebikes network by donating land on campus to use for stations. According to Tufts’ Associate Director of Transportation, Jason Novsam, the university is exploring opportunities to add Bluebikes stations.
“Tufts continues to seek opportunities to expand and grow transportation options via Bluebikes and other regional partnerships,” Novsam wrote in a statement to the Daily. “Our intent is to further expand public transit, bicycle, and pedestrian access through these types of programs in the years to come.”
Blake noted the speed with which Medford has built up its Bluebikes network.
“We started Bluebikes in Medford two years ago … and we started with three stations. We’re up to 14, and we have a 15th going in, probably by mid-October, hopefully sooner. So we will have grown it by five times in a two year period.”
Lungo-Koehn praised the Bluebikes program’s eco-friendliness and affordability.
“[The network] reduces people’s reliance on cars, it expands our green transit options, it’s more pedestrian friendly and it allows people that don’t have a car or even can’t afford a bike the ability to ride from station to station and do their daily activities for as little as $10 a month,” she said.
