Bikeshare is coming to the White Flint area.
The state announced Monday it awarded Montgomery County a $240,000 grant to fund four bikeshare stations in White Flint. The City of Rockville also received a $100,000 grant from the state to add two bike stations in the Twinbrook area.
A seventh bikeshare will also be installed in the Twinbrook area thanks to a $15,000 grant from The JBG Companies.
The Capital Bikeshare program allows users to rent bikes from one station, then later return them to any other bikeshare station or the same one they rented the bike from.
The funding provides the county with a new transportation mode as it tries to shed the strip-mall environment of the developing area along Rockville Pike in favor of a more urban design as mixed-use developments like North Bethesda Market and Pike & Rose continue to grow.
Earlier this year, Darcy Buckley, a planning official in County Executive Ike Leggett’s office, said the county is planning to add the rentable bike stations at Woodglen Drive and Executive Boulevard, the White Flint Metro station, Citadel Avenue and McGrath Boulevard, and the east side of the intersection of Old Georgetown Road and Rockville Pike. The JBG-funded station would be installed on Fishers Lane in Twinbrook, according to Buckley.
The state funding covers 80 percent of the cost of the bikes and the stations, according to the county. They are scheduled to go into operation in July 2018.
The county is also working to improve bike infrastructure in the redeveloping White Flint area that developers have coined “The Pike District.” In October, the transportation department completed a $135,000 project to build separated bike lanes on Nebel Street between Randolph and Marinelli roads. That project followed construction of the first separated bike lane ever installed by the county on Woodglen Drive in 2014 near the Whole Foods grocery store.
The Nebel Street bike lanes opened last month. Photo via Patricia Shepherd, Montgomery County DOT
The county eventually plans to connect the bike lanes into a network first detailed in the White Flint Sector Plan known as the White Flint Separated Bike Lane Network.
“This grant will help us expand our access to Metrorail in White Flint and Twinbrook, bolstering sustainable local and regional transit options for residents and businesses,” Leggett said in a statement. “We are committed to embracing sustainable mobility improvements like Bikeshare as we expand travel alternatives throughout the county to create a balanced and comprehensive transportation system.”
The new stations will join the county’s 57-station bikeshare network, which has locations in Friendship Heights, Bethesda, Chevy Chase Lake, Takoma Park and Silver Spring, and in the Rockville and Shady Grove areas.
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated the wrong first name of the planning official, it's Darcy Buckley, not Richard.
