Personal Transportation ideas to Reduce the Carbon Footprint in Belding

Personal transportation has had a huge increase that people have been seeing more in major cities around the world.

Public bikes and scooters are all over the major cities of Michigan such as Grand Rapids and Detroit. Their accessibility is really easy as well. With one touch of a button from an app, you can rent a scooter for your personal use and leave it wherever you are when you are done.

This type of transportation would be an incredible addition to Belding to help reduce its carbon footprint.

Increase in the use of individual transportation in the United States from 2018-2019

As previously stated, personal transportation easily accessible to the public has been increasingly popular; to further prove this point you can see the usage of different personal transportation methods in recent years in the United States below.

84%
BIKES

60%
SCOOTERS

How these Changes Will be Implemented in Belding

Implementing a Public Bike service in Belding

Public bikes are the main transportation feature Belding would be able to implement. At an average price of about $200 dollars a bike, 50 bikes spread across 10 locations would be an adequate amount based on the size of our town.

Belding has a small downtown area that is easy to navigate on a bicycle and also a highway that has much of the population and businesses on or near it, so bikes are an ideal mode of transportation.

Each night someone would be paid to collect the bikes and replace them in their original racks for the next day. The bikes can be repaired and maintained at the bike shop in Greenville, a nearby town, and any simple repairs can be done for the city.

Implementing a Public Scooter service in Belding

Electric scooters would be implemented along with the bikes with 50 total scooters spanning the town.

Contacting companies such as Lime for scooters will allow us to use their mobile application. With their app, anyone would be able to rent the scooters and after that pay for the amount of time they used the scooter for, making it an easy and contact-free experience.

The average cost for a scooter is about $300 and the maintenance is depending on the damage, so it ranges anywhere from $50-$200.

Public Bikes

Implementing a public bikes service in Belding with maintenance every year.

Initial Cost:
$10 000
Cost of Maintenance per year:
$10 000

Public Scooters

Implementing a public scooters service in Belding with big scooters companies.

Initial Cost:
$15 000
Cost of Maintenance per year:
$10 000

Where to put trails and bike paths in Belding

One problem that may easily occur when implementing the personal transportation systems is the fact that Belding has no designated bike or scooter paths or trails. In order to resolve the issue, extra money would have to be used to make either bike and scooter lanes or bike and scooter trails.

But because the plan is to use the bikes and scooters as a transportation method, the roads would just need to be painted to feature bike paths which would not have a high cost.

The main area where bike paths would be placed is in downtown Belding, close to the high school and where all the restaurants and gas stations are located for easy access for all. Due to this area holding most of the foot traffic, it just makes sense to establish the personal transportation center here.