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The Reading Housing Authority unveiled its new bike share station at Oakbrook Homes in Reading on Wednesday morning.

The station is run by Zagster, a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that hosts more than 160 bike-sharing programs in 35 states. At the Oakbrook station, five bikes will be made available to Oakbrook residents to ride for recreation or transportation, for running errands or other reasons.

By the end of the Wednesday event, the station was fully operational and open for community use.

People interested in riding the bikes can do so either by using the Zagster app or by sending a text. Once registered, users will be sent an access code, allowing them to unlock a bike. The first hour of riding is free, and each additional hour costs $2, which can be paid via the card reader on the back of each bike.

The housing authority worked with Zagster to choose the station’s location, a centralized section of Oakbrook, near the administration building. There, the bikes will be maintained by local contractor Richi Delgado.

Owned and managed by the housing authority, Oakbrook is a 525-unit apartment complex in southwest Reading.

Daniel F. Luckey, housing authority executive director, said he hopes other nearby organizations will soon install bike share stations of their own, promoting biking as a healthy and environmentally-friendly mode of transportation.

“I just think it’s great for the city,” said former Mayor Tom McMahon, who is assisting Delgado and Zagster. “Once we have a series of these stations around the city, it’ll be really convenient for people to take it (a bike) and drop it off at another location.”

The housing authority is the second Reading-area organization to get involved with Zagster. The Reading Health System uses Zagster for its two stations in West Reading and has 10 bikes available for employee use. One station is in the parking garage of the Reading Hospital Cancer and Heart Center; the other is in the Seventh Avenue parking garage. Because the bikes can be parked at any Zagster station, someone could ride a bike from the Oakbrook station to one of these other stations and park it there. However, a bike must ultimately be returned to its original station.

The Reading Housing Authority has a two-year deal with Zagster and will pay the company $9,000 each year for the Oakbrook station, bikes and maintenance. Revenue generated from the program will provide some money back to the authority, but Luckey said he is more concerned about getting people active than about making money.