Bicycle Sharing Programs

[bascule]

My city recently introduced a bicycle sharing program:

 

http://denver.bcycle.com/

 

The community maintains a fleet of bicycles. In order to use them, you have to sign up on the web site, pay a flat membership fee ($70/yr, iirc), and then insert your credit card at any stand to obtain a bicycle. Information about what bicycles are available where is available through the web site (also mobile apps). The first 30 minutes of usage are free. After that, you are charged a sliding scale depending on how long you keep the bike. A host of other features are offered, including GPS-based routed tracking (you can look up where you went on the web site after the fact)

 

I'm not really sure how I feel about this program. For starters, at $70/yr, I think it's fairly expensive. I purchased my Schwinn LeTour bike for $50 and put about $50 worth of parts into it to make it ridable, so in my eyes the cost of participating in the program is comparable to purchasing a low-end bike for yourself. I haven't tried riding on any of the bikes from the bike sharing program, but as an unusually tall person I don't think these bikes would fit me well. My current road bike has a 63cm frame.

 

Second, I was talking to a Parisian friend of mine about a similar program on their side of the pond. He noted that people often borrow bikes from this program to ride downhill, then leave the bikes at the bottom of the hill. As a result, they load up trucks with several bikes and truck them back to the top of the hill. I'm not really sure how I feel about that. If it motivates more people to ride bikes instead of drive, I think that approach is great, but I worry that it might detract from people purchasing their own bikes and actually riding them uphill instead of letting a truck do that for them.

 

Overall, I think this could lead to a unique set of hybrid solutions for people getting around town. If you need to make a lot of short trips in succession, you could do it on bike, then take a bus to get back to where you originally started, instead of using a car for the whole thing. Or, you could just bike it the whole way and burn some more calories.

 

I also know a lot of people aren't the DIY type, and if they purchased a used bike they would have to take it into a shop and spend upwards of $100 to get it into ridable condition. I really like the DIY approach to bicycle maintenance and try to fix as many problems as possible without having to take it to a mechanic. But I understand many people aren't going to be comfortable with that approach and will take their bikes to a mechanic to fix something as simple as a flat tire. So having a community-maintained bicycle fleet is a plus in that regard. And if you do get a flat tire, you need only find the nearest bicycle station, drop off the broken bike there, and pick up a fixed one. As someone who has walked a bike home several miles with a flat tire, interchangeable bikes sound like a great idea for that scenario.

 

What do you think?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I think it's very dependent on the area you're in.

 

For example, here at the University of Texas there's a huge number of students who have bikes, since the campus is very well suited to bicycling (or just walking) around. There are thousands of bicycles on campus, and a bike-sharing program would certainly get plenty of takers.

 

On the other hand, there are already so many bikes that the bike racks are completely full nearly all the time. We've hit bicycle saturation, basically, and a rack that holds 100 bikes for rental would be completely cleaned out in a morning. You'd have to invest in thousands of bikes and dozens of racks.

 

So it could work, but with special consideration given to the community and how bikes fit in.

[Mr Skeptic]

The program would be more suited to people who would prefer to use a mix of bike and vehicle (and have money to waste). Say, ride to work so as to not get sweaty, then bike back.

[JohnB]

Short answer. I kind of like the idea.

 

Looking at the website, it appears to be more for city use than anything else though. It might have wider acceptance if there were a network of Bikeways?

 

http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/BCC:BASE::pc=PC_934

 

That is the Bikeway maps for my home city, Brisbane. The Bikeways are quite extensive and expanding all the time. (My suburb, The Gap is on map 4 and the Bikeways are at least double what the map shows.) It is easy to go for a ride around various suburbs and between suburbs just using the Bikeways.

 

Many of the "on road" Bikeways are on back streets that see little traffic and have a dedicated Bike Lane marked on them. But you can ride from the city's far south west to the centre and only use "on road" lanes for about 300 metres all up.

 

I wonder how your new system could be adapted to work here? I think it might be worth looking into.

 

I do think $70/year and only 1/2 hour free is a bit steep, but you do have a concentrated system. I think $70/year and 1 1/2-2 hours free would be good for a more spread out Bikeway system like we have.

[JohnB]

Looks like we're getting a similar system.

http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/BCC:BASE::pc=PC_5516

 

Considering that this years budget concentrates on linking up the current bikeways into a more complete network I think it has a lot of promise.

[ydoaPs]

I think I'm going to get a bike when I move back home and only use my car when it rains or I have passengers or cargo. It saves money, provides more exercise, and helps the environment(that and it gives the finger to BP ). The only problem is that, in my area, there aren't many bike racks. The only ones I can think of are at the schools and at the public library.

 

In short, given the proper infrastructure, I like the idea, but I'd rather have my own. City maintained bikes probably wouldn't be very nice for long, but mine would(not to mention that it would be much cheaper over time).

[the tree]

so in my eyes the cost of participating in the program is comparable to purchasing a low-end bike for yourself.

If you're using the bike for one short trip every day for nearly an entire year, then it works out cheap - and presumably the bikes are pretty good as well.

 

Hiring bikes in Amsterdam is very popular, especially for tourists and that's done on the basis of one or a few days. If you were visiting Amsterdam for a short holiday, or a buisiness trip then you wouldn't want to take your bike with you and though you could hire a car, it's one of those cities where walking is faster than driving.

 

Second, I was talking to a Parisian friend of mine about a similar program on their side of the pond. He noted that people often borrow bikes from this program to ride downhill, then leave the bikes at the bottom of the hill. As a result, they load up trucks with several bikes and truck them back to the top of the hill. I'm not really sure how I feel about that. If it motivates more people to ride bikes instead of drive, I think that approach is great, but I worry that it might detract from people purchasing their own bikes and actually riding them uphill instead of letting a truck do that for them.

I don't think that's such a bad thing, if that's what people want to do.

 

Overall, I think this could lead to a unique set of hybrid solutions for people getting around town.

I remember being fascinated in Chicago by the stick-your-bike-onto-the-bus thing. Over here we can take bikes onto the buses and use the wheelchair space - assuming no-one who actually needs the wheelchair spaces gets on the bus, this means that a bus can hold at least two bikes, but it should be difficult to build buses that can carry many bikes.

 

I also know a lot of people aren't the DIY type, and if they purchased a used bike they would have to take it into a shop and spend upwards of $100 to get it into ridable condition. I really like the DIY approach to bicycle maintenance and try to fix as many problems as possible without having to take it to a mechanic.

Who taught you all of that? My parents taught me to ride and how to change a tire, but I picked up a lot of bicycle maintenance to earn a badge at cub-scouts. It seems that in some cases it would be worth teaching in schools, especially since there's no minimum age to ride a bike it would present a lot independence and empowerment to a lot of kids even if their family couldn't afford a car.

[Pangloss]

It's a cool idea but the French program has had a lot of problems. I'm surprised nobody remembers this story from late last year. Started as a public program by the Socialist party, they've since had to get a private company to maintain the bikes, 80% of which were vandalized or stolen. As I understand it, they sold the rights to the repairs as a marketing venture, but it cost the city a major income source in billboard advertising, which was signed over to the repair company.

 

It's actually a pretty good example of ideological concepts in practice, putting to test the notions of socialism and the old capitalistic charge that the public doesn't perceive value in something it doesn't own, but perhaps they can recover over the long run, or perhaps it just needs the right balance of socialism and capitalism combined. But Paris is such a melting pot -- I don't know maybe Denver will have more luck. I can't really imagine it working in New York, Chicago or LA, though.

 

This New York times article from last fall has a pretty good rundown on it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/world/europe/31bikes.html

 

“The symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source for criminality,” Le Monde mourned in an editorial over the summer. “The Vélib’ was aimed at civilizing city travel. It has increased incivilities.”

 

It is commonplace now to see the bikes at docking stations in Paris with flat tires, punctured wheels or missing baskets. Some Vélib’s have been found hanging from lampposts, dumped in the Seine, used on the streets of Bucharest or resting in shipping containers on their way to North Africa. Some are simply appropriated and repainted.

 

If memory serves, 60 Minutes ran a piece on it as well.

 

The Wikipedia article on the Paris program can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A9lib%27