The Downtown Development District has received a federal grant to pursue a bikeshare development strategy for downtown. The grant, which comes from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program, will fund a two-day visit to the city by national experts to consult with DDD and other city officials on how to best establish a bikeshare program.
“Establishing a bikeshare program for downtown has been on a lot of peoples’ agendas for a long time,” says DDD Executive Director Davis Rhorer. “So we’re really excited about it.”
As envisioned, a bikeshare program would consist of several stations—the Capitol, Town Square and Mid City, for instance. Cyclists could rent a bike at one stop and then ride to the others, utilizing the city’s greenway, which is under development.
Rhorer says he is not sure of the exact monetary value of the EPA grant or the cost to implement a bikeshare program, but he notes that similar initiatives have been very successful in other cities.
This is the second recent EPA grant award to Baton Rouge since receiving technical assistance for the downtown greenway schematic plan in 2012.
