The following announcement was provided by the City of Watertown:
Great news – the City of Watertown has won a Shared Streets and Spaces Fiscal Year 2024 Funding Grant from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) that will help pay for operations costs for Bluebikes!
This grant will help Watertown fund our public bikeshare system (Bluebikes) to continue to be a resource for the region for years to come. The grant will compliment a system expansion that will serve more people and, in more areas not currently served by the existing system.
It will boost our bikeshare system (Bluebikes) in providing more and better connections to the MBTA transit system, so Watertown’s residents & visitors can hop on & off a bike to get closer to their destination or home.
Bluebikes is a bedrock of our environmentally-sustainable goals, and this grant will help make our investments in Bluebikes to be more financially sustainable, with a new avenue of funding unlocked. Especially as Bluebikes’ electric bikes are here to stay, this grant will help shoulder the ever-increasing costs of providing our residents & visitors with Bluebikes infrastructure.
To support the City of Watertown’s bikeshare program, this grant would contribute to program operations by keeping the system in a state of good repair and helping to manage operations during future system growth. Watertown’s senior transportation planner Zeke Mermell will coordinate with residents, adjacent properties, City departments, and the system operator.