At Last, Hubway Offers Monthly Memberships

Photo Credit: Meredith Foley

Hubway, Boston’s bikeshare system, announced in a blog post this week that it will now offer  $20 monthly membership in addition to their short term and annual offerings. This is pleasant news for a few groups of people. Among them: college students and anyone who wants to try out the Hubway on a more sustained trial basis before taking the year-long plunge.

Previous to the announcement, monthly memberships seemed (to this writer and Hubway user anyway) like a notable absence in the membership offerings, which skipped from a 3-day access pass to an annual membership. Other big city bikeshares, like D.C.’s offer the monthly rate. It’s a good way for someone considering Hubway to decide whether they’re really going to “save sOoOoOo much money on T fare by just taking Hubway to and from work all the time,” as a certain Boston Magazine employee (who took two buses to get to work today despite the 70 degree weather) may or may not have thought to himself once upon a time.

Also, given Hubway shuts down for the winter and Boston’s collegiate herds migrate elsewhere for the summer, the monthly memberships might make more sense for university students, who are, realistically, only going to use it for April, a piece of May, September, October, and November. (That calculation will change if Hubway manages to make it year-round.)

The monthly membership comes with cool features. Like annual members, you get the big-kid pass that means you don’t have to play with the station kiosks, and if you use it after your membership date is up, Hubway just charges you for another month. (Okay, so if you accidentally incur an extra $20 charge because you forget that your membership ran out, you might actually find this really annoying.) Also, if you do opt for a monthly membership to sample it and decide that you actually use it on the regular, they’ll offer a $20 credit toward the $85 membership. (That’s something D.C. doesn’t offer.) Basically, it just got even easier for the tepid among us to dip our toes into the world of bikesharing. But then, we suspect Hubway knew that when they made this offering.