[Foursquare ITP developed for Arlington County] the country’s first Bikeshare Transit Development Plan. Another milestone that I credit with getting us capital and operating funding for the bikeshare program into the 10-Year Capital Improvement Program.
- Chris Hamilton, Former Bureau Chief, Arlington County Commuter Services
Arlington County’s Capital Bikeshare plan was the first strategic plan for an existing bike share operation in North America. Leading this plan, Foursquare ITP pioneered the application of a transit development plan approach to bike share. The plan’s goals were two-fold—to create a six-year blueprint for Capital Bikeshare expansion and integrate bike share into the existing transit network. We commenced the effort with a state of the practice review and conducted an analysis of the existing system, evaluating the system using a set of performance measures commonly applied to transit, which allowed for side by side comparison of bike share and public transit operations. Extensive civic engagement included a community advisory panel, stakeholder committees, public workshops, and a crowdsourcing website. Through this process, we gathered feedback on alternative scenarios for system expansion. To make the community’s vision a reality, we developed a fiscally constrained expansion plan that Arlington County has been implementing over the past few years.