On-demand bike lockers have arrived at Langley’s Carvolth Exchange park and ride, part of a program to expand bike-to-transit use by TransLink.
The pilot program is aimed at six transit exchanges, with Carvolth and the Moody Centre Exchange already up and running and four more, at Lonsdale Quay, 22nd Street SkyTrain Station, VCC-Clark SkyTrain, and Richmond-Brighouse station to be set up in the coming months.
The lockers are opened by the Bikeep app, which can be downloaded through GooglePlay or the App Store on smartphones.
The lockers are solar-powered, and 71 of them will be spread across the six locations over the coming months.
“This initiative is part of our goal to make it easier for people to combine cycling and transit into their everyday travel,” said Jeffrey Busby, TransLink’s acting vice president of engineering. “Introducing this state-of-the-art technology to our transit system will give customers another convenient place to store their bike and make it even easier to use green transportation in Metro Vancouver.”
Today we're launching smart bike lockers at transit hubs to give you more convenient and flexible bike parking options when taking transit.🚴â€â™€ï¸ðŸš´â€â™‚ï¸
Here's how to use them: pic.twitter.com/OXGdBvJlCD
— News from TransLink (@TransLinkNews) June 18, 2021
The cost of using the lockers is 10 cents an hour, capped at $1 per day, and $10 for monthly subscriptions.
“Bike theft continues to be a barrier that holds people back from cycling more often,” said Erin O’Melinn, HUB Cycling’s executive director. “Providing better end of trip facilities, like these bike lockers, will help people safely store their bikes and other cycling gear, and shift towards adopting cycling and transit into their daily commute.”
TransLink will monitor the usage of the bike lockers through the fall, and if they are successful, the technology will be rolled out to more locations in the future.
Anyone with customer feedback on the lockers can call 604-953-3333.
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