Aspen will be launching its bike-sharing program, the first for a small town in North American, next month with 100 bikes spread across 12 docking stations with 182 slots. Daily, three-day, seven-day, and season passes will be available for purchase with a credit card at a station or online at We-Cycle.org. Day passes will go for $7, and the idea is to facilitate short trips - fees start kicking in if a bike has been out of the rack for more than 30 minutes, although you're free to swap it out for another one if you need to keep going.

Curbed's put together a little map so our readers can see in fancy form where (approximately) the new bike share depots will be located. The locations are fairly tailored towards tourists, with a heavily downtown concentration and other locations by the Aspen Institute and Aspen Club & Spa, while the West End and East End of town are left mostly hanging. Here's where the bike share stations will be installed:

The system, which joins the 27 already in existence in the US and the 4 more expected to come on line this year, cost the city $500,000, which was made up from private donations as well as a public/private partnership. The bikes will be available from May until October or November, depending on early season snowfall. There's still 50 bikes up for "adoption," meaning that for $1,500, one can get their name or message inscribed on a bike's chain guard for five years.

· Aspen bike-sharing program ready to launch [Aspen Times]