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By: Erin Potts
Director of Marketing & Outreach
I have had the enormous privilege of working with Bike Share Pittsburgh since March 2015.
In the 10 years I’ve worked with Bike Share Pittsburgh, we’ve accomplished some big things. We not only launched Healthy Ride in May 2015, but also underwent a complete equipment replacement and rebranding, becoming POGOH, just 7 years later. I don’t know any other single bikeshare system in the US that can say they launched a bikeshare program in their city twice. And say this with pride. Our ability to adapt and grow is a testament to the hustle and the ingenuity of our small, but mighty non-profit and incredible team of passionate and dedicated people who’ve worked at Bike Share Pittsburgh over the years.
I’m a pretty nostalgic person, so as we approach our 10 year anniversary of bikeshare in Pittsburgh, and I celebrate my own 10 year anniversary in my role on March 16, I’ve put together a little highlight reel of 10 of the most awesome moments, projects, and milestones at Bike Share Pittsburgh, at least, in my opinion.
My Top 10
10. Debuting the first bikeshare bike at the Highmark building
Less than a month after I started working at Bike Share Pittsburgh, we held our first press conference at the Highmark Building to showcase the very first Healthy Ride bike, and announce the upcoming launch of Healthy Ride. I remember the bike arrived on a plane that same morning from our partners at nextbike in Leipzig, Germany.
9. Launching Healthy Ride at Open Streets PGH
With 500 bikes ready to roll, we celebrated the official launch of Healthy Ride at the first Open Streets that took over Penn Avenue. We had over 150 bikes set up in Market Square, and our partners at Highmark Health and Allegheny Health Network joined us for a massive 8am group ride to open the route. I remember renting my very first Healthy Ride that morning at 42nd & Butler near my then apartment, and being VERY excited when it worked.
8. Unicorn Bikes
Coming from a background in the arts, one of my favorite things is to watch what other people do with our bikes when given creative license, making bikeshare into rolling public art. The Healthy Ride Art Bike project worked with local artists to design and custom paint a small fleet of bicycles, and each year, POGOH’s very own creative team designs custom bikes to celebrate some of our favorite holidays like PRIDE, Halloween, and the winter holiday season. Unicorn bikes are ridden 4x more often than all the other bikes in the fleet, which speaks to the awesome impact of these beautiful pieces of bicycle art.
7. Traveling and Learning from Bikeshare in Other Cities
I have had the awesome privilege to travel each year for the North American Bike and Scooter Share Conference (NABSA). NABSA has brought me to both familiar and new cities including Chicago, Montreal, Portland, Austin, Indianapolis, Hamilton and Toronto, Philadelphia, Guadalajara. It’s been so much fun seeing how other cities operate bikeshare and learning from each, but the best part has to be traveling with my coworkers and riding lots of bikes together in a new city.
6. Becoming POGOH
I’m not sure there’s been a single other bike share program that has launched twice under the same organization, but we sure did. Healthy Ride was an awesome start, but growing our system to be an electric bikeshare program was priority enough to move from one hardware provider to another. That meant we had the opportunity to build an entirely new brand that reflects Pittsburgh and the inherent fun in using a bike to hop from place to place.
5. Bike or Treat
Halloween is personally my favorite holiday, and subsequently, Bike or Treat is the longest running bikeshare event in Pittsburgh. It started in 2015 with just a few dozen people dressing up to ride bikes and enjoying a few rounds at Threadbare Cider. Since then, it’s become the most ghoulishly good time, and the best Halloween-themed bike event. Please, if you know of other super fun Halloween bike events, please let me know, cause this one is by far my personal favorite. It’s the best day of the year.
Lots of people ask me what POGOH means, so I’ll tell you: we wanted to reflect Pittsburgh in our name, embedding PGH into the core of our identity because that’s who we are and who we serve. Now, some people say that the O’s are like bicycle wheels, but I see POGOH as a nod to the pogo stick; an active means of jumping from place to place, a jaunty way to liven up your day, and a joyful tool for bouncing around ‘tahn.
4. Making an affordable bikeshare program for all
Our team has worked a lot over the years to build pricing structures and programs that make bikeshare affordable for all. With Healthy Ride, we launched a unique partnership with Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT) to allow anyone with a ConnectCard to receive free, unlimited 15 minute rides with their ConnectCard. While transitioning to POGOH, we weren’t able to continue this offer, but created a unique membership that significantly reduced the cost of an Annual Membership to only $10 / year and a longer ride time to avoid overage fees. Even with the recent pricing increase, we’ve maintained the Mobility Justice Membership as-is to continue to support these riders, and provide a low-barrier to entry for new folks.
3. Community Ambassador Program
In 2017 we took a page out of Philly’s bikeshare playbook and built our own Community Ambassador Program; since then, it’s become our strongest program that gets people on bikes in their community, and supports our mission of building an equitable, inclusive program for all. This program has allowed us to work with some incredible individuals and nonprofit organizations who want to work with us to get more people active, engaged, and enjoying their community by bike.
2. Group Bike Rides
This is an obvious perk of the work that we do. While I’ve biked all my life, I got into urban biking by going on group bike rides when I was in graduate school in Salt Lake City. I can say with confidence that I would never have done it by myself. Group rides are a catalyst for new riders to gain confidence in biking on the streets and introducing new people to the joy of using a bicycle to get around.
1. Working with such an awesome, passionate group of people
Ultimately, these 10 years have been so amazing because of the incredible individuals who I’ve had the extraordinary pleasure of working with, biking with, and getting to know.
Anyways, that’s a pretty long love letter to bikeshare and this organization that’s kept me both entertained and challenged every day; enough that I’m still here 10 years later.
Thanks, Pittsburgh! I love yinz.
