It has been seven months since the Village voted against renewing its contract with Motivate International Inc., the New York-based company that owns Divvy. As a result, Oak Park has been without a bike-sharing service, and the community has been left to reexamine a system that will work.
Village Officials are now discussing the possibility of incorporating a privately-owned dockless bike-sharing program in Oak Park to combat issues riders faced with Divvy bikes in Oak Park.
The first issue that led to Village Officials voting against renewing its contract with Divvy was cost. In order to keep the program running, Oak Park was estimated to lose $80,000 annually due to low ridership.
In addition to cost issues, Oak Parkers were mostly concerned with having to return Divvy bikes to one of 13 specific docking stations through Oak Park, the majority of which were in the southern and downtown parts of the Village.
One anonymous Oak Park resident said that they would have been happy to utilize Divvy to ride from the CTA Green Line to their home in northern Oak Park, but there were no docking stations close enough to the residence to make a Divvy membership worthwhile.
Village Officials are likely to review dockless bike-sharing system proposals in the coming months. If approved by the end of the calendar year, Oak Park will have a new dockless bike-sharing program rollout by summer 2019.
