Metro and the city of Los Angeles launched new “Smart” Metro Bikes on Thursday in the North Hollywood area, the Valley’s premiere arts district and its busiest transit hub.

Sixteen new Metro Bike Share stations with up to 150 bicycles have been installed in North Hollywood, Toluca Lake and Valley Village near the Red/Orange Line stations and the Chandler Bikeway. Other local destinations now accessible via Smart Metro Bikes include the Great Wall of Los Angeles, North Hollywood Amelia Earhart Branch Library, the Television Academy, North Hollywood Gateway and Campo de Cahuenga. 

NORTH HOLLYWOOD, CA – AUGUST 8: Metro Bike Share Launch Press Event on August 8, 2019 at NoHo Red Line Station in North Hollywood, California.

Smart Metro Bikes allow riders to lock their bikes at an official Smart Metro Bike Station or, for a small convenience fee of $2, lock them to available public bike racks within the Smart Metro Bike service area. The cost to lock a bike outside of the service area is $20. Bikes can be unlocked using a Metro TAP card via card reader that is installed directly on the bike, or they can unlock it using the official Metro Bike Share app available for iOS and Android phones. Rides on Smart Metro Bikes start at $1.75 for every 30 minutes.

Metro worked closely with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) to determine the location of bike share stations in the North Hollywood area. An additional six stations and 50 bicycles will be added by the end of the year.

The agency’s Smart Metro Bikes, also available on the Westside, solve one of the challenges associated with using shared bicycles to reach city destinations that may not have a readily available docking station. Because these bikes accommodate Metro’s TAP card functionality, bike share riders can also easily use the card to ride other Metro and municipally operated transit services in L.A. County. To use a TAP card to unlock these bicycles, TAP cardholders must first enroll in the Metro Bike Share Program and register their tap cards at taptogo.net/metrobikeshare.

There are now 1,500 Metro Bikes and 150 stations located in Downtown L.A., Central L.A., Port of L.A., North Hollywood and the Westside. Metro plans to expand the Metro Bike Share program to create a system of more than 4,000 bicycles countywide over time.

To date, approximately 800,000 trips have been made on Metro Bike Share in Los Angeles County. Bike share riders have collectively traveled over 2.4 million miles on the bicycles since the program launched and have reduced over 2.3 million pounds of carbon dioxide – a major greenhouse gas – emissions from the air.

For more information on Metro’s Bike Share Program, visit metro.net/bikeshare. Here’s map of bike lanes, bike paths and bike routes in the NoHo area from Metro’s interactive online Bike Map: