Hammond wants the opinions of Northwest Indiana residents on whether it should install a bike-share program.
The Hammond Parks Department is considering implementing a program and has put up a survey on its website, gohammond.com, to gather feedback on whether people would use such a program.
Donna Muta, head of the Hammond Parks Department, said the survey isn’t just for Hammond residents but anyone who would possibly use a bike-sharing system.
Early results from the survey so far are positive, she said, with 89 percent saying they would use the system and 57 percent saying they don’t already own a bike. Muta said the survey will remain online for a few more weeks and she hopes at least 400 people will take it.
Muta she’s considered a bike-share for a while, especially after seeing how the Divvy system has worked in Chicago for the past two years.
“It’s just a nice amenity I want to offer to promote (Hammond’s) bike trails,” she said.
The city is looking specifically at the program offered by Zagster, a bike-sharing company that runs systems across the country, including at Purdue University and in Carmel. Hammond can order pods, which carry five bikes, and place them throughout the city. Customers can then rent bikes through a website or mobile app for a certain period of time.
Muta said the city’s looking at Zagster because it’s turnkey — the company delivers the bikes to where the city wants them and is responsible for taking care of them through agreements with local bicycle mechanics. Zagster also includes insurance for the program, she said.
She hopes to pay for the bike-share program entirely through corporate sponsorships. Companies could sponsor a pod of bikes and have their logos placed on the bicycles. A pod of bikes could also be placed near that company, she said.
The city would get 93 percent of the revenue from the program, but Muta said she does not expect the city to make money off the deal.
“It’s not a profitable thing, but it’s more of an amenity that you’re offering,” she said.
The Hammond Port Authority is also considering taking part, Director Milan Kruszynski said, partly to help attract more people to the area. A bike-sharing program would offer another activity for people coming to the north side of Hammond, so a family could go on a bike ride after playing at the city’s splash pad, he said.
Ideally, all of these activities will help attract more people from Chicago and the western suburbs to move to the area, he said.
“It’s more than just recreational. It becomes economics,” Kruszynski said. “That’s eventually where we’re headed, to attract the up-and-coming folks.”
Neither the city nor the port authority has decided whether they’ll implement a bike-sharing program. Muta said the city would take the winter to consider the matter and that the earliest any bikes would be installed would be next spring.
