Can Bikeshare Work Without Bike Lanes?

Expectations were high for Pasadena's entry into LA Metro bikeshare—the system's first expansion out of the urban core of Downtown Los Angeles. So when Pasadena exited the program just a year later, citing low ridership and high costs, it came as a surprise to many.

But transportation writer Steve Scauzillo suggests that the root cause of the program's failure was simple all along: Bikeshare addressed the wrong problem. Access to bikes wasn't the factor keeping Pasadenans in their cars, he argues. Instead, the barrier to bike ridership was a lack of safe infrastructure to ride on.

As Pasadena turns to private services to try the bikeshare experiment anew, Scauzillo urges the city to first consider the experience of riding any company's bicycle on its suburban streets.