A regional bike-share program is continuing to grow as the city of Edinburg approved an agreement to participate in the project which already includes the cities of McAllen, Harlingen and Brownsville.
The Edinburg city council approved an inter-local agreement with the Lower Rio Grande Valley Development Council, solidifying their participation in a regional bike share program that originated in McAllen in 2015.
“The premise is that you can ride, leave the bike from station to station,” City Manager Ron Garza told the council on Tuesday of the program.
Though the program was first launched by the city of McAllen, the LRGVDC took over the program with hopes to expand it. In 2019, they secured a grant from the Texas Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration through the Rio Grande Valley Metropolitan Planning Organization to do just that.
The LRGVDC stated they identified bikeshare programs as possible source of economic, environmental, health and safety, and mobility benefits to communities, according to the agreement.
In May, McAllen and LRGVDC officials celebrated the regional expansion, debuting nine additional bike stations in Cameron County — five in Brownsville and four in Harlingen.
As part of Edinburg’s agreement with LRGVDC, the city will pay a one-time fee of $100,000 which amounts to approximately 20% of the total grant.
“That also covers our first year annual reoccurrence which will be about $10,000 to $12,000 a year,” Garza said, “and that’s really to process the payments and things like that and once the system — obviously being region-wide — generates revenue, some of that revenue will be put back into the system so that every city that is collaborating in this match, their annual fee will go down.”
Edinburg will have four bike stations located at the Transit Terminal, Edinburg Bicentennial Park, Municipal Park, and South Park.
Because of the nature of the program, there won’t be a fixed amount a bikes at the stations at all times, though Garza explained the bikes will be re-balanced every two weeks so that each station has at least 10 bikes.
In charge of the installation of the docking stations and kiosks is BCycle LLC, a company based in Wisconsin that runs bike-share programs for the cities of Austin and San Antonio.
In participating cities, a one-hour pass to rent the bikes is $2, while a 24-hour pass is $6. A seven-day pass costs $15, a 30-day pass is $30, and an annual pass is $65.
There are currently a total of 17 stations throughout the Valley with a total of 140 bicycles.
