Mayor Rahm Emanuel today announced that in the first three weeks of the Divvy bike share system in operation, Chicagoans and visitors to the city have taken more than 50,000 trips and have collectively ridden an estimated 175,000 miles. 

“In a very short time, Divvy has made a significant impact on the way people move around Chicago,” said Mayor Emanuel.  “We are extremely pleased by the amount of participation and enthusiasm Chicagoans and our visitors have shown for bike sharing.”

On Saturday afternoon, Divvy was the busiest bike sharing system in the world as measured by the percentage of available bikes in use, beating the popular systems of Rio de Janeiro, Taipei and New York City, according to researchers at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), an interdisciplinary research group at University College London.

Divvy staff plans to install up to 40 new stations in the next week, ramping up to 300 stations and 3,000 bikes by the end of this summer.  The new locations are denoted on the stations map at DivvyBikes.com.  By next spring, Divvy will be in 400 neighborhood locations with 4,000 bikes.

Advertisers have also been encouraged by the early results.. Sprint, the global provider of voice, data and internet services, has purchased advertising space at 75 stations for a three-month period. 

Each Divvy station has a touchscreen kiosk, station map, and a docking system that releases bikes using a Member key or ride code.  Customers can purchase $75 Annual Memberships or $7 24-Hour Passes, which allow riders unlimited trips in that period.  The first 30 minutes of every trip are included in the cost of the Membership or Pass, and incremental fees apply to trips that exceed 30 minutes.

Annual Members use a personal key used to quickly unlock bikes from any station.  More than 3,000 Chicagoans have already signed up for Divvy Annual Memberships at DivvyBikes.com.

Of the more than 50,000 Divvy bike trips made since the system launched on June 28th, about 75 percent were from customers who purchased 24-hour passes, with the reminder from annual members.   At more than 7,200 trips made on Saturday and Sunday, each Divvy bike averaged more than 10 weekend trips. 

The system is dubbed “Divvy” to reflect the nature of bike share, where members “divide and share” the use of the bikes.  The bicycles’ distinctive “Chicago Blue” paint is the same color as the stripes on the Chicago city flag. Chicagoans can find out more about the system through social media on Twitter at @DivvyBikes and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/DivvyBikes.

Stations scheduled to be installed by Monday, July 29 include:

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