SEPTA and Bike Share
April 14, 2015
Philadelphia will join the ranks of cities with comprehensive bike share programs later this month. The new program, called Indego, will represent a new travel alternative for Philadelphians, complementing the existing public transportation network with another non-automotive option.
Throughout the Bike Share planning process, the Mayor's Office of Transportation and Utilities (MOTU) worked with SEPTA to determine Bike Share station locations near SEPTA locations. For example, Bike Share stations will be located within a block of the following station stops:
| Market-Frankford Line | Trolley Lines |
| 40th Street Station | 36th Street |
| 34th Street Station | 38th & Lancaster |
| 30th Street Station | 33rd Street & Market Street |
| 15th Street Station | 22nd Street & Market Street |
| 8th Street Station | 19th Street & Market Street |
| 5th Street Station | 18th Street & Market Street |
| 2nd Street Station | 2nd Street & Market Street |
| Spring Garden Station | Regional Rail |
| Girard Station | 30th Street Station |
| Broad Street Line | Templue University Station |
| Girard Station | Suburban Station |
| Fairmount Station | University City Station |
| Spring Garden Station | |
| Ellwroth-Federal Station |
Bike and transit coordination is a key strategy for SEPTA to serve and grow ridership In order for people to use transit, access must be convenient and safe. The distance to and accessibility of a transit station to an individual's home and their destination largely determines whether or not they will choose to take transit.
Typically, people who live within one-half mile of a transit station are between four and five times more likely to use transit than those outside the one-half mile radius. The area surrounding the station or stop where pedestrians make up a significant portion of the transit trips is often referred to as the "primary catchment area."
However, when commuters have access to a bicycle, the transit catchment area significantly increases. A report published in 2014 by the Mineta Transportation Institute entitled Perceptions of Bicycle-Friendly Policy Impacts on Accessibility to Transit Services: The First and Last Mile Bridge quantified this ridership market opportunity. Philadelphia "cycle transit users", or CTUs, that were polled in the study estimated that they travel 2.8 miles by bicycle as part of their multimodal trips. This is significantly more than the average one-half mile trip of a pedestrian. Approximately 15 percent of Philadelphia CTU respondents indicated that if they could not easily combine bicycling and transit, they would use another mode. You can read the full document here.
In other words, bicycling can serve to make SEPTA's system and services more accessible to a larger number of people by increasing the rider catchment area for each station. When it rolls out later this month, Indego will provide another convenient way for people in Philadelphia to travel about the city without a car.
