A BICYCLE CHRISTMAS
Each year in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, the city funds the construction of a unique Christmas tree. This Christmas tree display is different every year. One year it was made out of umbrellas, another year it was made out of takeout food containers and pretend T-bone steaks, and a different year it was made out of musical instruments that the children could interact with.
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This year, in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, the Christmas tree is made out of bicycles. Small bicycles big bicycles all kinds of bicycles lit up with LED lights. Also on the side of the Christmas tree are solar panels that that collect sunlight and power the lights of the tree. In addition, there are bicycles all around the base of the tree that people can ride to power other lights on the tree as well.
In downtown Silver Spring Maryland, there has been a recent surge of bike rental companies. There are at least three different types of bikes that you can rent out by the half hour. The bikes are either positioned on stationary racks, or even more recently, bikes are just found all over the place without a specific docking station, for these bikes, a lock on the rear wheel of the bike prevents anybody who hasn’t paid for a ride from taking the bike. One specific company, lime bike, allows you to pick up a bike wherever you find one, which is searchable from your smart phone, and drop it off wherever you feel like it. The bikes are either positioned on stationary racks, or even more recently, bikes are just found all over the place without a specific docking station, for these bikes, a lock on the rear wheel of the bike prevents anybody who hasn’t paid for a ride from taking the bike. One specific company, lime bike, allows you to pick up a bike wherever you find one, using the locating app searchable from your smart phone, and drop it off wherever you feel like it.
This is pretty attractive for commuters, because there is no docking station that you need to locate in order to leave your bike. Ranging from $.50 per ride to over a dollar per ride, these bikes are everywhere in the area and relatively affordable.
Here are some photos I took during a recent evening where we saw the tree for the first time. You can see the solar panels, the bicycles lit up all around the tree, as well as the bicycles around the base of the tree. The bikes on the base of the tree are the Capital Bikeshare brand of the rental bikes, one of the three companies that are doing this type of bike rental service in the area.
In my opinion, this is a pretty cool way to do a downtown Christmas tree display. It’s engaging for the community, pretty cool to look at, and promotes the idea of reducing car transportation in such a congested, traffic-prone area of the United States.
All content and images by @jaymorebeet, taken on November 15, 2017 with an iPhone6s.
In Santa Monica, there's a shopping cart tree that goes up every year. It's pretty cool but it'd be great if they did something different each year and commissioned local artists.
Woah I'd like to see that! Pretty neat - i bet they could find a lot of abandoned shopping carts in my area :) I already know of a few hehe.
I'll try to make it down there soon and post about it 😉
This is awesome but in my country that christmas tree would be depleted out of bikes in couple of hours haha :)
Oh boy! Yes, we've got a ways to go before bicycling becomes more mainstream, but it's so nice to see the beginning of efforts to get us there!
I meant in my country they would steal all of them, as soon as they see them :D and what you say about that, in germany, if im not mistaken, they have highway for bikes only, and I think somewhere in Japan aswell, not sure though.
Very cool, upvoted and re-steemed!!!
Nice! Thanks so much @cognoscere!!!
Now that's my kind of tree. Such a cool idea. Love the newer bike systems you describe for rent. They are going up here in the PNW, especially Seattle and Portland. Finally going in the right direction away from all the cars. Thanks for sharing a wacky and way cool Christmas tree. Bike on.
Right! When we were in San Francisco in the fall, my husband and I rented the Ford GoBikes. For $20, we used bikes all day to bike all around the city. Those hills are NO JOKE, but it definitely beat using a rental car or hailing taxis and parking!
I don't remember the name of that most classic hill in SF, the one they always trash the bottom of cars on in the movies when they go airborne, but I DO remember it was hard to even walk up...let alone on a bike. Good show there pedaling all about that city.
I love this! As a full time bike commuter, I am happy to see any effort by a municipality to promote cycling as a form of transportation. The fact that it's a pretty cool looking tree is a bonus.
Me too! (not the bike commuter part, but the genuine effort that the area is making to improve bike safety and promote bike transportation around the county.) They've even put up county park bikes so that people at the parks can bike on the trails that connect one park to the next. I'll have to go take some photos and get the details!
Nice! I used to work in Sandy Spring & I am a little familiar with silver spring. Great photos! This post has been deemed resteem & upvote worthy by your friendly @eastcoaststeem ran by @chelsea88 (not a bot)
Awesome! Thanks so much :) I've seen the sandy spring banks all around but I'm not sure exactly where sandy spring is :)