Waltham falls behind schedule on planned Bluebikes launch 

City Council is not on track to meet its spring 2026 implementation date to bring Waltham into the local Bluebikes bike-sharing program.

Councilors voted in October to join the program after more than three years of discussion on bike-sharing programs and lengthy contentions about the vendor-selection process. The Traffic Commission recommended the city use Bluebikes, a program already in use by municipalities including Boston, Cambridge and Somerville after a presentation by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council last September.

After resolving to implement the program by spring 2026, the council discussed it again briefly in November when it considered possible locations for “hubs” on public land where residents could borrow and return the bikes. Councilors voted to use a list of locations proposed in 2017 by a private bike-sharing company and add additional locations recommended by ward councilors.

The council hasn’t discussed bike-sharing since. 

Councilor-at-Large Colleen Bradley-MacArthur, who introduced the resolution, said that based on the November discussion, she thought the city’s Planning Department was working on implementing the program but as of early May hasn’t been able to get in touch with the department. Planning Director Robert Waters said his department was not involved with the program, saying it was within the purview of the Traffic Commission. A spokesperson for the commission confirmed it hadn’t discussed the project since the September meeting when it made its recommendation.

Council President and Ward 9 Councilor Robert G. Logan said Mayor Jeannette A. McCarthy would be including the bike-sharing program in the city’s budget for fiscal 2027 and that he didn’t know any more about its progress.

McCarthy confirmed that she’s working on a list of bike-sharing hubs. She said her work on it had been sidelined until she completed her budget recommendations, which she is submitting to City Council this Monday. She added that as of May 25 some councilors had sent in recommendations for hubs in their wards and some had not.

Under the Bluebikes program, municipalities own bikes and hubs where residents can pay to borrow these bikes for a set amount of time, after which they need to return the bike to another hub in the system. The day-to-day management of the system is outsourced to a private company.

Bradley-MacArthur first proposed this bike-sharing plan to the council in 2022. At previous council meetings, McCarthy expressed hesitation on implementing the program because of a previous experiment with the LimeBikes program in 2017, which didn’t have set locations to borrow and return bikes, and drew some complaints from residents because of Limebikes littered around town.