“I think after the initial shock wears off, there are going to be a lot of people who have been relocated, who lost a vehicle and can’t afford a new one, who work by the hour or need to get around and aren’t going to be able to,” Carter Stern, executive director of Houston Bike Share, tells Fast Company.
Stern also hopes that these donated bikes can warm more Houstonians up to the idea of bikes as a viable transit option. “I think viewing the mobility in a city less as a binary decision and more as giving people a healthy ecosystem of options–whether they want to ride their bike to work, ride their bike to the transit stop, drive their car and then ride their bike to lunch–whatever it is, giving people options,” he says.