Spokies

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Sign up today for your opportunity to get a unique perspective of our city’s history, art and architecture. Each tour is led by an expert guide who will reveal the people, places and stories that have made Oklahoma City rich with culture. As opposed to simply driving through downtown, bike tours give you a more in-depth look at neighborhoods and buildings. The casual atmosphere of the tours allows for more questions and interaction with the experts guiding the tours.

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Downtown Oklahoma City, Inc. and the City of Oklahoma City are proud to announce that the Spokies Bike Share program is up and running again! We corrected some software and credit card processing issues and welded the locks to the bikes so they can no longer be stripped from the docks and stolen.

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Update (7/2/2012): The program has reopened.  Read about it here.

[flickr id=“7253069806” thumbnail=“small” overlay=“true” size=“large” group="" align=“right”] After only two weeks in operation, all bikes belonging to the Spokies Bike Share program have been removed from the racks.  Citing problems with the credit card software and a design flaw in the bikes that has “led to incidents of theft and vandalism”, the Oklahoma City Office of Sustainability and Downtown Oklahoma City, Inc. made the decision to temporarily suspend the program.  The software and bike fixes can be expected to take up to three weeks to complete at which time they hope to restore the program.

I am very confused as to what exactly their plan was for the highly recognizable therefore difficult to sell bicycles, but two men have been arrested for stealing bicycles from the new Spokies bike share program:

On May 22, police were called to the WestTown Day Shelter near N.W. 3rd Street and N. Virginia Avenue. A worker there reported Fred Wren, 20, and Anthony Grove, 26, possessed bikes belonging to the Spokies program. When police checked the serial numbers, they discovered the bikes had not been rented and should have been sitting at a kiosk outside the downtown Oklahoma City library.

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The OKC bike share program, Spokies, has been getting a ton of press lately.  Here is a round-up of the main stories.

From NewsOK:

From KFOR:

Plus text stories from News9 and the Oklahoma Gazette.

The OKC bike sharing program, Spokies, has announced where the first six kiosk locations will be placed. Spread out from Midtown to Deep Deuce to Bricktown and the Convention Center, the system seems well placed to provide easy transportation throughout downtown.

Memberships will range from $75 dollars for a full year to $5 for a day.  Rentals are free for the first 30 minutes and $2 for each half-hour after that.  You can get full details at their website, http://spokiesokc.com or by following them @SpokiesOKC on twitter.

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Bike sharing programs are the rage around the world and across the nation (the photo above is of the DC bike share program, Capital Bikeshare).  Oklahoma City first announced the program back in August and additional details were announced yesterday at the Oklahoma City Council meeting.  According to NewsOK, the program has been given an official name of “Spokies” and will consist of 95 bicycles (up from 90) placed at six stations in the downtown Oklahoma City area.  The money for the bikes and stations is coming from a federal grant.