Note: This post was originally published on August 22, 2008.

Brenton Skating Plaza is now offering bike rentals. Explore Des Moines’ scenic trails and experience Downtown in a whole new way! Mountain, Road, and Hybrid bikes available for rental (one hour, 1/2 day, full day, or 7 day rentals) starting as low as $12 per hour.

I’m very excited to see that we can now rent bikes downtown for two reasons:

1. I don’t own a bike, but sometimes get the inkling to want to go for a bike ride.
2. I just got back from Provincetown last Saturday and had rented a bike there for the week and had a great time riding it and exploring the Cape.

According to local news reports Des Moines’ first bicycle rental facility opened this week at Brenton Skate Plaza. Brenton has teamed up with Bike World to rent out bikes during the ice skating rink’s off season and in an effort to draw more people downtown, specifically to the downtown trails and views along the Principal Riverwalk.

Rentals are available seven days a week, weather permitting, until the ice skating rink opens back up in November. They are hoping the bike rental season to run annually from April to November.

Now that you’ve got your bike, there are some great bike mapping trails from BikeIowa. Just click on the this image for a printable PDF from BikeIowa’s website.

You can find more biking and walking trail maps on our Downtown Maps page.

Also have you heard about the Des Moines Bike Collective?
The Collective is part bike library, part bike co-op, and part bike school.

Here’s some details about the Des Moines Bike Collective from the BikeIowa website:

Bike Collective’s Purpose: To put more bikes under more people.

How does it work?
They get their bikes as donations from folks who have too many [apply "the three years dust" rule: if the dust on your bike is three years old, or older, give it to us, and we'll find it a new owner], or as left-overs from police auctions and elsewhere.

They will see to it that it gets a proper rehab, and then will match it with a person who is looking for perhaps a first-ever bike, or a “first bike since i was a kid” bike.

They anticipate that we’ll have bikes for kids of all ages, road, off-road, and townies.

A person desiring a bike will leave a nominal deposit for the bike [say between $25 and $60 or so] and can have the bike for six months. at the end of six months, if the person wishes to return the bike, they’ll get their deposit back. There hope is that they enjoy riding it, and wish to keep it, they can forfeit the deposit and the bike is theirs.

The new owners will get much more than just a bike. They’ll roll out the door of the Collective with knowledge of the importance of maintaining this bike, and knowing that they can come back with any questions or concerns. That’s where the other aspects of the Collective comes into play. They offer a wonderful curriculum of classes, from basic bike etiquette, how to ride a bike in town and in traffic, how to maintain a bike, a macgyver emergency repair course, a course on “your seat bag, what it needs, and how to use it,” and much more.

For more information, here is a link to the complete article at BikeIowa:
http://www.bikeiowa.com/asp/features/featuresdisplay.asp?ArticleID=823

closeAuthor: MulderDSM Name: Larry Bradshaw
Email: admin@livingdowntowndesmoines.com
Site: http://www.larrybradshaw.net
About: Please see www.larrybradshaw.netSee Authors Posts (383)

(2 votes, average: 2.50 out of 5)

 Loading ...

None found