BANGOR, Maine — The Bangor City Council will decide Monday whether to move forward with a plan to build a privately owned bikeshare program in Penobscot County.
The company, Tandem Mobility, is behind an effort to bring between 150 and 200 bikes to more than 30 locations across Greater Bangor, following a nearly identical project in Portland.
"The environment of Maine works right now for this kind of thing," Justin Folger, a leader at Tandem, said Monday. "It’s more of a public transit type of a deal than sort of a novelty, which is what bikeshare has been maybe in other markets."
The plan has strong supporters in city hall, most vocally, perhaps, from Anne Krieg, director of community and economic development for the City of Bangor.
"I think it's something that will really be good for the neighborhoods as well as for our downtown," Krieg said.
Krieg and others see the bikeshare as part of a larger strategy to connect the city into a unified transportation network.
Despite this ambitious vision, it is unclear whether Bangor has the infrastructure to support a city of bikers. Right now, there is only one dedicated bike lane in the entire city, located on a busy stretch of State Street. Furthermore, many of the thoroughfares used to traverse Bangor are often congested with fast-moving traffic.
"It definitely is not where it maybe should be," Maddie Jensen, a planner with the Bangor Area Comprehensive Transportation System, said. "It’s kind of a 'chicken and the egg' problem, right? Do you have the infrastructure before the bikes get here, or after? And I think it’s going to have to kind of happen at the same time."
On Monday, the city council will vote on a memorandum of understanding, a sign of the city’s commitment to Tandem Mobility's project.