NORTHAMPTON — Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra joined Sen. Joanne Comerford, Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa and the state’s Undersecretary of Transportation Policy Samantha Silverberg for a commemorative bike ride through Northampton on Monday, also known as “413 day.”
Taking off from Union Station at 170 Pleasant St., participating officials rode to commemorate the more than $1.5 million in grant funding awarded to Northampton as part of the state Department of Transportation’s (MassDOT) Microtransit and Last-Mile Transit Grant Program.
The award, funded with $10 million of Fair Share money from the fiscal year 2025 supplementary budget, supports the regional ValleyBike electric bikeshare system, including operations, fleet expansion and dock replacement.
“It’s been really remarkable to integrate Bike Share into our infrastructure. We’ve been really working hard in Northampton to create more biking infrastructure and make this kind of transportation accessible to everybody … not just here in Northampton, but throughout the Valley,” Sciarra said outside Union Station. “One key project that we have that is about expanding this network as well is our Main Street redesign, which will be a really critical piece of infrastructure and help connect us all with bikes and other forms of transportation and just make it safe and accessible.”
The Microtransit and Last Mile Transit Grant Program aims to expand transit options for stretches between transit hubs and destinations. Microtransit straddles the line between private rideshare services and public buses by supplying flexible routes to multiple people, while last-mile connections provide transportation between the bus stop and the passenger’s destination.
The grant will allow the ValleyBike program to finish transitioning from older bike models to the newer Drop Mobility e-bikes in Northampton, Easthampton and South Hadley. It also broadens the program’s capacity to take on new communities and areas of service.
Director of Planning & Sustainability Carolyn Misch, in a brief interview before she hopped on her bike, explained that the grant funding for the bike fleet correlates with the city’s broader efforts to expand bike infrastructure.
“All the communities in the Valley have been working on Complete Streets projects to create safe, separated bike lane facilities, which makes it feel more comfortable, and use these bikes,” Misch said. “As we invest in the road infrastructure to create safe spaces or the shared-use paths, we’re also trying to get people to say, ‘OK, now we have this bike share system. So you don’t have to invest in your own bike.’ This is a shared system that you can be a part of and use the bike infrastructure to get to your destination.”
Others, such as Sabadosa, expressed an excitement for the city and region’s bolstered bike share transit system, mentioning that the bike program helps not only Northampton residents get around but also those arriving in Northampton after having taken public transit.
“I see constituents all the time biking to work, whether that be at UMass or other places in the Valley, coming down to work at Coley Dickinson [Hospital]. People want to get on bikes,” Sabadosa said. “If you come to downtown Northampton, you can then get on one of these beautiful bikes behind me and get around. It’s not just, as the mayor said, opening up opportunities for Northampton, it is opening up opportunities for people who never thought they were going to have public transportation in their communities.”
