COEUR d'ALENE — Locals and visitors could be sharing bicycles soon. 

This week, Coeur d’Alene's General Services Committee voted to approve an initial agreement between the city and Zagster, a Massachusetts-based company that has implemented more than 140 bikeshare programs in communities across the country. Coeur d'Alene Trails Coordinator Monte McCully said the agreement allows Zagster to work with the city to locate potential sponsors for the program in the community, while noting the city is not on the hook for any initial costs.

“One of the steps in making our city friendlier to bicycles is to create a bikeshare program," McCully said. "This would provide people the opportunity to check out or rent a bike from various locations around town.”

Bikeshare programs allow residents to visit a kiosk, or other fixed locations, and check out a bike in a variety of ways. The Zagster program, for example, allows people to use an application on their smartphones to connect with the kiosk and unlock a bike of their choosing. Users of bikeshare programs are then able to return the bike at a kiosk located closer to their final destination.

The city attempted to create its own bikeshare program more than a decade ago, McCully said. But, he added, most of the bikes left around town for people to use free of charge went missing.

Although once again implementing a bikeshare program has been widely discussed since, McCully said the programs themselves are cumbersome to manage so implementation wasn't pursued. However, since there are now companies that provide all of the logistics for the programs, McCully believes the time is right to bring the program back to the Lake City.

Should the city pursue a bikeshare program with Zagster, McCully said, the company would install all of the necessary infrastructure, provide bikes, provide repair and rebalancing contracts and their own tech support. However, if the company does not find enough willing sponsors in the city, McCully said the city will not accept the program.

"Providing a bikeshare program will give both citizens and visitors a means to get around and recreate in our city that they may not have had the opportunity to do before," McCully said.

Councilwoman Kiki Miller, who sits on the General Services Committee, told The Press Wednesday the agreement between the city and Zagster does not mean the program itself gets a green light. Instead, it only allows the company to work with the city to identify potential sponsors, which the company will then approach.

"If it gets to a formal agreement, I will have to see what that looks like in terms of the city's liability and responsibility," Miller added.

Miller said she believes programs like the one proposed by Zagster are meant more for commuters, and that she isn’t sure if Coeur d'Alene is large enough to support it. She also expressed concern a bikeshare program could hurt businesses in the community that rent bikes to tourists.

The city council will vote on the agreement on Jan. 17.