Kansas City Residents Build Their Own Bike Sharing Network

Kansas City residents build their own bike sharing network. Photo via This Big City

Kansas City, Missouri has the highest ration of highway miles to city population in the country and also ranks last in bicycle and public transportation ridership in the nation. BikeWalkKC, a local bicycle advocacy group takes the approach, that if you don’t have the bicycle infrastructure you want, you build it yourself and they are asked local volunteers to help build a new bike sharing system for their city.

Volunteer labor not only reduces operational costs for the organization, but more important, BikeWalkKC is hoping that volunteers will become invested in the system they build and in turn, become advocates themselves.

Kansas City residents build their own bike sharing network. Photo via This Big City

Over a two-day period and with the support of local business and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, 75 dedicated volunteers assembled NINETY bikes for the new bike share system. The bikes will be ready for Kansas city on July 3rd and spread from the Market District to the north and the downtown areas of Union Station and Crown Center to the south.