The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) announced last May that Bay Area Bike Share would expand across five Bay Area cities, bringing 1,400 bikes to Oakland, Berkeley, and Emeryville by 2017. More recently, several components of the East Bay’s bike share program have been debated in a series of ongoing public workshops, including where to install bike stations. But perhaps the biggest question facing the program is how to make bike sharing equitable.

Under the current plan, the price of an annual membership would be $88, but could rise to $149 by the time the program kicks off this fall, thereby making the East Bay home to one of the most expensive bike share systems in the nation. Bay Area Bike Share Outreach and Communications manager Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz said the potential price hike stems from the fact that the program is transitioning from public to private financing. The higher rates would pay for operations and maintaining bikes and stations and would help fund a revenue-sharing program with MTC. “The San Francisco-San Jose pilot program had been operating under a heavily subsidized system,” Cosulich-Schwartz said.

The private-public partnership with Motivate, the largest bike share operator in the country, will include a discounted membership — $60 annually — for low-income users. But some bike activists note that the MTC contract states that only those enrolled in PG&E’s California Alternate Rates for Energy (CARE) Program qualify for the reduced rate, leaving out a significant number of people who aren’t registered for utility services or are homeless.

On January 12, Oakland’s Bicyclist & Pedestrian Advisory Commission, which advises and recommends policies for safe pedestrian and bikeway systems, released a letter that the group had sent to the Oakland City Council’s Public Works committee in support of the new program, but with the potential finance barriers at the top of the list of items to consider as the plan moves forward. “The $149 annual membership fee ($60 low-income) will make it one of the most expensive Bikeshare systems in the country. In order to create a positive perception of the service, opportunities need to be sought to further reduce the cost to users, especially for low-income individuals,” the letter stated. “Overtime fees may more likely be accrued by users in lower-income neighborhoods on the edges of the service area, and we suggest addressing this issue within the low-income discount membership structure.”

Robert Prinz, a BPAC commissioner and Bike East Bay education director, said in an interview that he’s hopeful the bike share program can be beneficial both to Motivate and to riders, but said there is still plenty of work to do in terms of making bike share more equitable. “There’s a lot of holes in that plan we need to address,” he said.

Prinz said he sees the shift to private funding as both a good and bad opportunity. On the one hand, there are going to be a lot more bikes on the road. But groups like BPAC and Bike East Bay now have less influence over the system, including determining subsidized programs and equitable-access plans. “Higher density and a large number of bikes is great,” he said. “But it’s not just about the number of bikes, it’s also about where they are so people have convenient places to ride.”

City bike share programs across the nation have garnered positive reviews for safety and for clearing up traffic, encouraging physical activity, and reducing carbon emissions. But they’ve also struggled to make transportation more accessible to those with low or zero income.

A study conducted by the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) in 2012 found that income distribution of bike sharing members skews toward a higher-income level relative to the population for each of the cities surveyed. It also showed that individuals with higher levels of education were more likely to use the bike share system; in both Salt Lake City and Minneapolis-St. Paul (counted as one city in the analysis), the study found that more than 80 percent of bike share members had a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Susan Shaheen, an adjunct professor and co-director of the Institute of Transportation Studies’ Transportation Sustainability Research Center at UC Berkeley who was the lead researcher in the 2012 and 2014 MTI bike sharing studies, said in an interview that pricing is an important part of bike share programs. At the time of Shaheen’s study, the median price for an annual membership in bike share programs nationwide was about $65. Shaheen said the number has likely gone up in recent years, and noted that Citi Bike in New York raised its annual membership prices from $95 to $149 in 2014.

Shaheen said an annual price of $149 makes sense if a portion of the funds help subsidize low-income riders. However, she points out that price isn’t the only barrier for accessing bike share programs. Some people who don’t live close to a bike share station, or “doc zone,” get penalized with overage charges because of the time it takes to return a bike. In addition, the program requires users to have a credit card to purchase a membership. “Are these bikes available to lower-income [people] geographically and financially? Are these individuals banked or unbanked?” she asked. “There are questions relating to equity that don’t even have to do with the price.”

Shaheen said Bay Area bike share planners should analyze the best practices of other cities. One example is Pronto Cycle Share in Seattle, another Motivate-operated system, which teamed up with affordable housing providers to offer discounted annual rates as low as $20 per year.

There’s also Hubway, a Motivate-operated city bike share program owned by the cities of Boston, Cambridge, Brookline, and Somerville in Massachusetts. Rather than having Motivate administer low-income passes, the City of Boston offers eligible residents annual memberships of just $5 — along with a free helmet and additional thirty-minute usage period, in case they live a long distance from a doc zone. Eligibility is determined by a member’s income level. The City of Boston also hosts a “Prescribe-A-Bike” system setup with local physicians who can refer low-income patients for a $5 Hubway annual membership. Currently, subsidized members make up about 15 percent of the Hubway’s 13,000 members.

Cosulich-Schwartz emphasized that Bay Area Bike Share is still working out the details, and that initiatives to improve accessibility may eventually arise. For instance, he said that discounted rates that currently apply to residents enrolled in MUNI’s lifeline program could also be employed by its East Bay counterpart, and there’s even been talk of implementing retail storefronts where users could pay in cash. However, any plan to include people who aren’t signed up for utility services or don’t have credit cards has yet to be officially included in the deal.

Either way, Shaheen stressed that not all cities are the same, and thus not all pricing models will work the same. “In the absence of research and understanding, it’s hard to know if the user and operator sides are both achieving economic equity and environmental sustainability,” she said, making public participation at this stage ever more crucial.

“There’s still ongoing outreach for people who want to plan for this,” Prinz said. “We have such a good opportunity to get bike share right and make it equitable here in the Bay Area.”

Reverend Ken Chambers’ Westside Missionary Baptist Church is located on Willow Street in West Oakland, just half a mile from the bustling railroad yard where dozens of trains pass each day. The locomotives pull mostly sealed shipping containers filled with furniture, fruits and nuts, and electronics to and from the city’s busy seaport. But soon these tracks could become the busiest corridor for shipping coal on the West Coast.

Terminal Logistics Solutions (TLS), a company headed by former Port of Oakland Executive Director Jerry Bridges, is proposing to ship millions of tons of coal through a marine terminal that will be built on the old Army Base. If the coal plan moves forward, Chambers fears that members of his congregation would be poisoned by toxic dust blowing from train cars, silos, and conveyors. Chambers is also concerned about the effects of burning coal in the global climate. But Chambers isn’t just fighting the developer TLS to stop the project. He is also pushing back against a group of politically influential Oakland clergy who have lined up behind TLS and coal.

Oakland’s Black clergy members are split on the question of coal, and part of the reason is the money that Bridges has promised to churches that support the plan, according to numerous sources.

Last December, Chambers attended a meeting of Oakland pastors at the Greater St. Paul Church in Uptown to discuss the issue of coal. Bridges of TLS spoke to the pastors, promising jobs at the marine terminal, and stating that there would be no negative health and safety impacts. Then Bridges thanked Bishop Bob Jackson, leader of Acts Full Gospel Church for supporting coal. And according to Chambers and other sources, Jackson thanked Bridges for the financial contribution that Bridges had made to the Acts Full Gospel Church’s youth program.

“Jerry said he’d already given money to Bishop Bob Jackson’s church youth program,” said Chambers in an interview. “And Bishop Jackson thanked him for the donation. He’s been bought off.”

Jackson did not return multiple phone calls and emails seeking comment for this story. But numerous sources confirmed that Bridges told the group of pastors that he gave money to Jackson’s church. Furthermore, sources say Bridges has been in talks with Jackson and other pastors about setting up a fund to channel cash from coal shipments to their churches and nonprofits — if the pastors can convince the Oakland City Council to approve coal shipments through the city.

Pro-coal church leaders have organized themselves into a group called the Ecumenical Economic Empowerment Council. Members of the group appeared at a December 8 council meeting to urge the councilmembers to approve the coal plan. “We would like to see this project moving forward as soon as possible,” said Pastor Joseph Simmons of the Greater St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church, to the council. “And we would like to see that there’s not any more information going into the public that scares the public.”

Simmons wrote in an email to the Express that the Ecumenical Economic Empowerment Council is pro-coal because of the jobs it will generate for Oakland residents. “With the very high level of gentrification that has been occurring in Oakland (West Oakland, specifically), people need quality jobs and careers to live where the rents are escalating to be the highest in the country,” wrote Simmons. Simmons also denied that Bridges has contributed money to any churches, or made any promises to fund churches with coal money. “There are no promises to any of our churches or us as individuals in any way,” Simmons wrote. “The community benefits program has not been discussed with us. How this will be done should be discussed with TLS officials.”

Bridges did not respond to multiple phone calls and emails seeking comment for this story. TLS’s official website states that the company will “grow strategic partnerships with community and faith-based organizations to make a positive and meaningful impact by committing funds,” and that “TLS will commit funds based upon the annual throughput of the terminal[.]”

As the Express reported last fall, members of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP), a West Oakland nonprofit, said Bridges offered the organization money on the condition that the group help line up support for coal shipments through the city (See “Buying Support for Coal,” 9/21). Margaret Gordon, co-founder of WOEIP, said at the time that her organization rejected the offer because coal would pollute Oakland and other communities along the rail line, and would also drive climate change when it is burned in foreign countries.

Gordon said in a recent interview that there are multiple problems with the money Bridges is offering to churches and possibly other organizations. “These dollars that Bridges is offering to these ministers, is this separate from what the city and Oakland Global Trade and Logistics have already implemented, or is this a separate deal?” asked Gordon.

Gordon said that the original community benefits package with Prologis CCIG Oakland Global, the master developer of the former Army Base, was negotiated between the city and the developer in order to ensure transparency and to provide benefits to the most impacted communities and to the city as a whole. Gordon said Bridges, whose company has a separate, private business agreement with Oakland Global, appears to be negotiating side deals in secret to gain political support for his project. “Who gave the authority to Jerry Bridges to do such a thing?” Gordon asked. “How do they choose who they give dollars to? And is this money dependent on coal?”

Reverend George Cummings of Imani Community Church, who also opposes the plan to ship coal through the city, said the coal plan has divided the city’s Black clergy. Cummings said he attended some of the earlier meetings between the pastors and Bridges, and said the meetings only took place once the coal plan was made public. “They weren’t talking to clergy until they ran into trouble at the city council, and then all of sudden they wanted to engage the faith community in a conversation,” said Cummings. “They are interested in making money. That’s okay. I’m not mad at them — but not at the expense of the community and people’s health.”

Chambers, who is a cancer survivor, said his children grew up struggling with asthma. “I’m very sensitive to any unhealthy air quality that I would breathe, or that my family and my parishioners would have to breathe,” he said. Chambers has been organizing meetings of other Oakland clergy and community members against coal.

The council isn’t expected to make a decision on coal any time soon. City staffers are in the process of hiring Environmental Science Associates, a San Francisco-based consulting company, to analyze potential health and safety impacts of shipping coal through Oakland. A draft report will not be ready until June, according to city records. If the report shows that shipping coal through the TLS marine terminal would harm the health and safety of workers or city residents, the council could exercise a clause in its contract with Prologis CCIG Oakland Global to block the coal plan.