VTA Installs More Electronic Bike Lockers at Transit Centers
San Jose, Calif. –The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority announced it has completed the conversion of 110 bike lockers to on-demand service through the use of a smart debit card.  The new and retrofitted lockers, located at 12-transit centers spread throughout the county, hold the promise of tripling bike storage capacity by opening the lockers up to day-by-day use.
The most recent round of retrofits saw electronic lockers placed at the following Park-N-Ride locations: Penitencia Creek and Bascom in San Jose, Evelyn in Sunnyvale and NASA/Bayshore in Mountain View.  VTA plans to monitor the use of the smart card lockers to see how the first-come, first-served lockers affect bicycle-commuting patterns.  If the day use lockers succeed in adding capacity, VTA would then seek grant monies to continue the retrofit project.
All twelve locations with the smart card bike lockers were at or near capacity on bike locker usage.  Previously, a person could sign up for a bike locker, pay a one-time $25 fee and keep it until they returned the locker key, whether they used the locker on a daily basis or not.  With the new system, the electronic lockers are available to bike commuters on an on-demand basis, with cyclists paying a 25 cent-a-day fee.
Cyclists can purchase the necessary smart card on line at www.bikelink.org or at VTA’s River Oaks Campus, Building B, 3331 N. First Street, San Jose, CA 95134. A minimum value of $20 is required when the card is first purchased and added value can be loaded on the card at the bikelink website when necessary.  An added bonus is that the bike link cards also work with similar lockers located at Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) stations.
In addition to the four Park-N-Ride locations listed above, the following locations also have electronic bike lockers available: Alum Rock, Branham, Cottle, Great Mall, Ohlone/Chynoweth, River Oaks, Tamien, and Winchester.
For more information on electronic bike lockers, please visit www.vta.org and click on the “bike information” navigation button.