Roanoke.com: Organizers of Sharebike venture aim to provide two-wheelers for area use

A Roanoke group is almost ready to begin a bike-sharing enterprise that wants to provide cheap and environmentally friendly transportation. Sharebike founder Ron McCorkle looks at a pile of donated bikes Wednesday at his home. ‘’We have many bikes, and they’re all ready,'’ he said. A Roanoke group is launching a bicycle-sharing program that would let people sign out two-wheelers at between five and 10 area businesses and organizations to ride wherever pleasure or work takes them.

The not-for-profit venture, called Sharebike, is partly modeled on others that have moved scores of people in Europe and in U.S. cities such as Portland, Ore., and mobilized students on college and university campuses, including at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. Last summer Paris, yes, the city of light, put 10,000 public-use bicycles on its streets.

The goal is to provide inexpensive, environmentally friendly, calorie-burning transportation for people who don’t drive, prefer not to or don’t need to for where they are going. But other such enterprises have struggled with bike theft, abuse and breakage. That’s a risk the Roanoke project hopes to manage in part by asking participants to supply identification, contact information and a signature on a release.

Ron McCorkle, who rides a two-wheeler to the grocery store and also suits up for exercise rides, is Sharebike’s founder. “Simply borrow a bike in one spot and return it at another,” reads the Web site established earlier this year for Sharebike.

McCorkle, a 38-year-old self-employed auditor, said Sharebike will be a tax-exempt corporation on a mission. He has begun the paperwork on corporate and tax matters, paid minimal startup costs himself, formed a board and lined up partners, he said.

“This is a nice thing to be associated with,” said Doug Robison, co-owner of Wildflour Market and Bakery on Fourth Street, which has agreed to accept a free bicycle rack and serve as a check-in and check-out station. “It’s fun, and I’m really excited about it. It’s all part of the whole green movement that’s going on.”

RIDE Solutions, a transportation service of the Roanoke Valley-Alleghany Regional Commission, is furnishing support in the form of signs and free bike racks for companies and organizations serving as check-in and check-out stations.

Bikes could be available as early as December if the weather is pleasant. Otherwise, McCorkle said, he will launch when temperatures rise this spring, though the group is already collecting used bikes, repairing bikes, raising money and staging trial runs.

Many communities have tread this path before and found that it takes more than a few free bicycles to start a pedal-powered transportation movement. In Portland, Ore., the U.S. forerunner in community bicycling programs, which borrowed the idea from Amsterdam, Netherlands, unrestricted use of the bicycles ended because of theft and breakdowns. It ran in various formats for 12 years, ending in 2007.

“It was a lovely idea, and there was a lot of community support. There was not an accountability system, and the bikes often disappeared,” said spokeswoman Alison Graves for Portland’s Community Cycling Center, which educates and equips low-income adults to travel by bikes that they own. A Charlottesville, Va., program launched in 2002, met its end for similar reasons.

McCorkle said Sharebike’s ongoing costs and budget needs will be minimal; there won’t be any full-time employees. He is expecting Sharebike to pay for a planned downtown headquarters by charging $3 to check out a bike for a half-day’s usage and $6 for a day. The other stations will not charge.

Bikes have not been a problem.

“We have many bikes, and they’re all ready,” McCorkle said. “You’ll see Sharebike all over the place in the spring.”

The city council is scheduled to vote Nov. 19 on leasing space in the City Market Building to serve as Sharebike’s headquarters. Sharebike may receive the space rent-free with the stipulation it pay the usual maintenance fee, which covers utilities and would be $250 for the unit Sharebike is seeking. Brian Brown, the city’s economic development administrator, said city leaders view Sharebike as a public service helping promote the Roanoke River Greenway, which features nearly five unbroken miles and several shorter segments.

The 472-square-foot shop that Sharebike has in mind runs from Wall Street Southeast, where there is an exterior entrance, through to the food court, so patrons could enter from either side. The headquarters will serve as a check-out station, repair the Sharebike two-wheelers, offer bike-repair services to the public for a fee, host bicycle-repair classes and events, and provide biking information including maps, according to current plans.

Although Sharebike is intended to offer freewheeling enjoyment, a few restrictions will apply. Bikes will be due back in 24 hours, although longer-term arrangements will be available for a fee. Riders will be expected to follow the rules of the road and encouraged to strap on helmets, which will come with bikes. If Roanoke police see any safety issues developing, officers will take steps to teach cyclists and motorists how to better coexist, police spokeswoman Aisha Johnson said.

Sharebike’s board — McCorkle; James Rosar of Roanoke, an avid bicyclist and bicycle mechanic; and Paula Willis of Roanoke County — still must decide such questions as whether there will be age restrictions on young riders.

McCorkle has some reason for optimism. Last summer he and members of his team offered trials of Sharebike’s various services. They put about 50 broken-down bikes found at Indian Rock Village and Jamestown Place apartment complexes back on the road, McCorkle said. They put some bikes out for free public use.

McCorkle said Wednesday he hit upon opening a community bicycling program early in 2007 while yearning to serve God. McCorkle provides independent assessments of the financial records of companies and other clients. He is on the road a lot, and before Sharebike, he said, his work-driven life lacked a certain something.

Then, “it just hit me,” he said.

Today, there’s a pile of bicycles in front of his house — the “parts pile,” as he describes it. On the side of the house are 10 of the 25 two-wheelers tuned up for the launch of Sharebike. He led a reporter through a small opening into his basement bicycle shop.

“Every tool you’d need to fix a bike is here,” he said, standing amid tubes, tires and more than 100 tools that he bought from a defunct Salem bicycle shop.

The idea of using the market building came from City Manager Darlene Burcham. McCorkle met Rosar on a bicycle ride, and before long, a man who heard about the plan at a bike shop contacted McCorkle with an offer of 12 used bikes, some in running order.

Rosar said he stepped forth out of a mutual commitment to making bikes more accessible. “It would serve mankind well and our society in particular to depend more on our own selves for the mode of power to get around … than it does to fund the Arabs to do so,” Rosar said.

The latest version of a modern community bicycle program is Velib in Paris. Ten thousand gray bicycles are scattered at 750 rental spots in the French capital. Riders must register and place a deposit, but the first 30 minutes of the ride are free. It costs one euro, or about $1.35, for the first half-hour after that; two euros for the second half-hour, The New York Times reported. Participants can buy subscription cards that work like debit cards.

Sharebike, by comparison, is planning to accept cash, checks and credit cards, the founder said.