Now in Foggy Bottom, soon to be seen in Wheaton?

Not to be outdone by DC or Arlington, Montgomery County Councilwoman Valerie Ervin proposes that the Maryland jurisdiction become the region’s third to adopt a bike-sharing system. Ervin proposes MoCo install bike stations at all the county’s high-density downtown areas, such as Silver Spring, Wheaton and Bethesda at the least, and possibly downtown Rockville, Takoma Park, and the new urbanist communities in Gaithersburg, among others.

So far the MoCo idea is just that, an idea. There’s no word whether Montgomery might adopt a DC-style SmartBike system or Arlington-style Call-A-Bike technology. Either way, if bike-sharing goes forward in Maryland (and it should) there will be some bumps along the road. More bike-sharing is always a good thing since it makes car-free living easier, but with nodes of urbanism spread several miles apart from each other, bike-sharing in Montgomery County is necessarily going to be a different animal than bike-sharing in Arlington or DC, where walkable neighborhoods are generally adjacent to other walkable neighborhoods.

It seems likely that shared-bikes in Montgomery County are more likely to be used for last mile trips than for shuttling around for errands, and for relatively long cross-county trips between the two spokes of the Red line. That means users are likely to need bikes for longer periods of time in MoCo than DC or Arlington.

Not that that’s any reason to oppose the concept, just that for it to work Montgomery County planners will have to recognize and accommodate differences in travel patterns between the jurisdictions.

BTW, bike-sharing seems like a fabulous idea for a redeveloped Tysons Corner, where that last mile is going to be an issue. Ready to step up, Fairfax County?