Koloni bikes at the Palatine Metra station. Photo: Igor Studenkov
The northwest suburbs are poised to get a bike-share system of their own as Harper College, a community college based in Palatine, has teamed up with Koloni bike-share platform to launch a bike-share pilot. Meanwhile, Pace is launching a new bus route to serve the community college.
The fees are time-based – the first hour is free and each additional hour costs $2. Harper College students and faculty get discounted rates – the first two hours are free and each additional hour costs $1. They can also buy $15 annual passes that entitle them to four hours of free riding per day. Users can take bikes to any destination within Harper Community College District 215, which includes Palatine and much of the surrounding suburbs, including all of Arlington Heights, Barrington, Barrington Hills, Elk Grove Village, Inverness, Lake Barrington, Mount Prospect, North Barrington, Prospect Heights, Rolling Meadows, Schaumburg, South Barrington, Tower Lakes and Wheeling. The pilot will run through November 2022.
For the time being, the bike-share system is hampered by the fact that it only has two dedicated bike parking racks – one on campus and one at the Palatine Metra station – and each rack only accommodates five bikes. But Harper College is reaching out to other villages and government entities within its district to try to install more racks, which would make the service more practical in other parts of the district.
The bike-share pilot launches two years after the last bus to serve the Harper College campus, Pace Route 696, was suspended due to low ridership early in the COVID-19 pandemic. On August 8, Pace will launch a new Route 697, which will link the Northwest Transportation Center, a major bus transit hub in Schaumburg, and Harper College. Harper officials told Streetsblog that, while they were disappointed with Route 696’s suspension, they welcomed the Route 697 pilot, since the restored connection to the Northwest Transportation Center would help students taking the buses from further out in the district.
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