Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Bubi Busting Out in Budapest




From Budapesti Közlekedési Központ:


“bubi” (Budapest Bicycle) will be Hungary’s first public bike-sharing system, similar to already existing European models. It is to be operated by BKK, the Centre for Budapest Transport, the new transport authority of Budapest. An Information Day is to be held by the future system operator (BKK) in Budapest, on Wednesday, March 21, 2012. The one-day event will be structured in the form of a roundtable discussion about the most important aspects of the implementation and operation of a public bike-sharing system in Budapest. Due to the limited number of attendees, we would like to invite companies who operate or produce such bike-sharing systems.

image credit: BKK

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Starck Reality of Bordeaux Bike-share

PIBAL is not 3rd Generation Bike-sharing
Contrary to what has been written in the news about the new City Streamer bicycle "PIBAL" for Bordeaux, France, it is not a replacement bike for the V³ bike-sharing system there. These bicycles, which were designed by Philippe Starck and manufactured by Peugeot at the request of the City of Bordeaux, will be used to replace the fleet of the city's long term bicycle loan system, Vélo Ville de Bordeaux (VVB). 


In addition to their bike-sharing systems, many French cities like Lille, Montpellier, and Strasbourg, have fleets of bicycles which the city loans to its inhabitants for longer periods of time. This is generally a rental period of three months to a maximum of one year. This information was confirmed by the V³ operator, Keolis and the City of Bordeaux.


PIBAL is a very interesting bicycle. It will be built with fluorescent tires, a dynamo for front and back automatic lights, internal hub brakes and shifting, heavy duty front and rear racks to carry heavy loads, and it can be pushed as a scooter or ridden as a bike. Also, these bikes will be available for sale at around €300 ($400 US). According to the bicycle loan agreement for a VVB, it is not advisable to share!

image: Décision-Achats


Russell Meddin    bikesharephiladelphia.org

Monday, February 20, 2012

Weather or Not to Bike-share

Snow-covered London's Barclays Cycle Hire
Is it ever too cold to bike-share? A rather mild North American winter and a pretty rough Central European winter is causing a lot of thought on whether or not to bike-share in winter weather.

As was posted here on December 12, 2011, many bike-sharing systems around the world went into hibernation in December. A notable exception is Canada's Toronto bIXI. It has stayed open and enjoyed the milder winter. Last month, Toronto celebrated the "Coldest Day of the Year" bike ride. It was not very cold and one can see the bike-share bikes are right up front in the photo below.

According to the Gazette, the spokesman for both the Montréal and Toronto bIXI systems, Michel Philibert, indicated that they will watch Toronto's experience, as that city embarks on its first winter with a bIXI service to determine if Montréal should stay open through winter as well. He also had respectable usage numbers for Toronto's system on the winter days that are above freezing. The most northern systems in Asia are the Tianjin Binhai New Area Public Bicycle and the pilots programs in Beijing, China which are open and operating in the winter cold. Although the most northern system in Europe, Trondheim, Norway's Bysykkel is in winter hibernation, the northern German city of Hamburg has StadtRAD rolling. Even in winter with snow or just cold, it seems there can be bike-sharing in the world's upper latitudes.
bikeMi in Milan, Italy this month
Anyone can ride in the winter 

Not only latitude, but altitude also effects the weather. At the foot of the Rocky Mountains at 5,400 ft (1,650 m) above sea level, Colorado's Boulder B-cycle has left two of its stations open for the winter. The locations near the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research will test how the stations, bikes, and users fare in the extreme temperatures. They hope the lessons learned will allow year-round service. 

As for bike-share users, here is a link on tips from ICEBIKE for the winter cyclist. Enjoy riding in the snow, if you have some!



Friday, February 10, 2012

San Francisco Bay Area Bike-share Pilot Tender Opens


The Bay Area Air Quality Management District issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a Regional Bike-sharing Program for the California cities of:
- San Francisco with 500 bikes in 50 stations, 
- Redwood City with about 100 bikes in 10 stations, 
- Mountain View with about 100 bikes in 10 stations, 
- Palo Alto with about 100 bikes in 10 stations, and 
- San Jose with about 200 bikes in 20 Stations. 


The RFP calls for this pilot program to begin operation on July 1, 2012. This will be the largest bike-sharing system on the West Coast of the United States. It will cover a larger area than the regional systems of The New Balance Hubway around Boston and Capital Bikeshare around Washington, DC with less than half the number of bikes. Each on these cities of this pilot program are along the Caltrain rail system to facilitate easy commuting.


The timetable called for in this RFP will make for a very interesting summer for bike-sharing in the USA. Within a month, Chicago, New York and now San Francisco are expecting to launch bike-share.


image: BAAQM RFP


Russell Meddin - ain't no bikesharephiladelphia(.org) for this summer! Why not Philly!

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Bike-sharing World Map's 2 Millionth

The Bike-sharing World Map is the number one resource to find localities with bike-sharing. It was referenced over one million times in the last 11 months. While it took a few years to reach it's first millionth page views, it is now in constant use. We at The Bike-sharing Blog are delighted to bring you this service.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Capital Bikeshare Striving to Become Financially Self-Sufficient


For a new mode of transit and a fledgling service, Arlington’s portion of Capital Bikeshare (CaBi) finished its first year with a cost recovery rate that other transit providers in the U.S. would find admirable. The regional CaBi service launched on September 20, 2010 and Arlington’s portion achieved an 81% a 53% cost recovery – the ratio of revenues to operating costs – during its first year. Compared to other bikesharing services in the U.S., CaBi did well considering it was the only year-round service at the time. Compared to other modes of transit in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, CaBi fares well, but still has a way to go.

Bikeshare Systems                       Ratio   Year
Capital Bikeshare (Arlington)         53% 81% 2011 (operates year-round)
Capital Bikeshare (DC)                 120%*   2011 (operates year-round)
Denver Bike Sharing                      149%*   2010 (operates 7.3 months/year)
Note: Percentages for the latter two do not include management and marketing costs.

Rail Systems                                 Ratio   Year
U.S.A.
Chicago (CTA)                              53.1%  2010
New York City (NYCT)                71.7%  2010
Philadelphia (SEPTA)                    51.1%  2010
Washington, DC (WMATA)          62.1%  2010

Europe
Amsterdam                                     41.3%   2007
Berlin                                              70.3%   2010
Brussels                                          35.2%   2007

Asia
Hong Kong (MTR)                        149%   2007
Taipei (MRT)                                119%   2006

Bus Systems                                Ratio   Year
Arlington, VA (ART)                    35.5%  2011
Chicago (CTA)                             38.2%  2010
New York City (NYCT)              36.6%  2010
Philadelphia (SEPTA)                   28.5%  2010
Washington, DC (WMATA)        19.4%  2010

Arlington’s portion of the CaBi service had $218,000 in revenues (from memberships, user fees, and sponsorships) and $270,000 in operating expenses from Alta Bicycle Share. Additionally, marketing and management costs were $142,000 for a total Year 1 expense of $412,000, which equates to revenues covering 53% of program expenses. Operating expenses were $155 per bike per month. If not including marketing and management expenses, then Arlington's cost recovery is 81%.

We’ve blogged about bikesharing being an economical transport mode for both customers and local governments, but now we have the data to document it. CaBi began operations with 14 stations and 110 bikes and completed its first year with 18 stations and 113 bikes. Only three bikes were needed to be added as the service shifted from a 67% bike-to-dock ratio to 50% to improve bike balancing operations. Arlington’s portion of CaBi benefitted from being a regional service with D.C.’s 100 stations.

We have lots of impressive data to share on CaBi’s first year of service from 9/20/10 – 9/19/11. Here are some interesting Arlington-specific CaBi facts:
  • total trips starting in Arlington: 50,372 trips
  • total trips ending in Arlington: 50,115 trips
  • total trips regionally: 999,759 trips
  • total miles of trips starting in Arlington: 46,776 miles
  • average Arlington trip length: 1.04 miles
  • average trip duration: 19 minutes
  • total CO2 saved from trips starting in Arlington: 6,268 pounds
  • total calories burned from trips starting in Arlington: 2,011,368
  • total minutes of trips starting in Arlington: 1,180,830 minutes (21,293,622 minutes regionally)
  • number of Arlington members of each type:  1,165 annual, 111 month, 144 5-day, 4,228 1-day
  • number of crashes in Arlington: 1 crash
  • bikes stolen in Arlington: 0
We’re well into our second year and now up to 23 stations and 145 bikes. Service expansion is continuing in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor with 21 more stations and 144 more bikes coming online in the spring, nearly doubling the size of Arlington’s service. Additionally, we have funding to add another 25 stations in FY13. We look forward to increasing CaBi’s impact in the County by reaching more neighborhoods and folks, making CaBi an integral part of everyone’s lives – whether you live, work, or play in Arlington.

Sources:
Denver Bike Sharing 2010 Annual Report
National Transit Database Data
Wikipedia Fare box Recovery Ratio

Cross-posted on CommuterPageBlog

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Have Card, Will Travel

B-cycle in the snow
DecoBike in Miami Beach
One of the hallmarks of the 4th generation of bike-sharing will be the single transportation card. A pass that is operative on the bus, metro, tram, light rail,  taxis, car-sharing and car parking. We wrote about the experiment with the  Mobilitätskarte (Mobility Card) of Berlin in our Bike-sharing World -- June 2011 as a step in this direction. Another hallmark will be an inter-operative card between bike-sharing systems. A good example is Boulder B-cycle members can use Denver B-cycle and visa-versa. In Germany, a registration, by card or telephone, with Metropolradruhr or nextbike will work in all their locations. Bicincittà is in the process of making all their bikes available to all their card holders.


Haikou Public Bicycles Haikou, China
Last week, the bike-sharing service in Wuhan, China (currently the largest in the world with 5,000 more bikes than Hangzhou) announced an intent with the bike-sharing service in Haikou, China to give reciprocity to each other's card holders to use each other's system. Wuhan is in central China on the Yangtze River and has harsh winters. Haikou is on a large island in the South China Sea with warm winters. According to reports by the Chinese Bicycle Association, the intent is to allow leisure and business travelers to enjoy bike riding in the tropical climate of this ocean city! What a complementary pair of services.


This conjures up whole new avenues for bike-sharing. The systems of Scandanavia, such Stockholm City Bikes, could have reciprocity with Barcelona's Bicing with less harsh winters. The Polish system in Rzeszow, RowRes, could exchange with Batumivelo on the Black Sea. B-cycle in Madison, Wisconsin could let its University of Wisconsin members enjoy spring break with B-cycle in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in the USA.


As bike-sharing becomes more universal and technology takes bike-sharing into the 4th generation, these types of member-sharing across different manufacturers of systems will be common. If two of the largest cable television competitors in the US, Comcast and Verizon, can come together to service mobile telephone subscribers, bike-share companies, and in some cases their municipal owners, can come together to service their subscribers also.


images: LifestyleDenver, DecoBikes, Haikou


Russell Meddin    bikesharephiladelphia.org

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

The Bike Sharing World - First Week of January 2012

Europe:
     UK:
London's Barclays Cycle Hire shares some pretty impressive statistics as it starts 2012. There are now almost 146,000 subscribing members to the 6,000 bike system. That compares to Barcelona with 120,000 current subscribers for 6,000 bikes and Paris with 209,000 subscribers for 20,000 bikes. Although it does not top Dublin, which has the highest ratio of subscribers to bikes with 38,000 subscribers to 550 bikes, London is very respectable!
Also, a most interesting statistic is that in the one year that 'Boris Bikes' have been open to "casual users" or walk-ups, there have been 2,030,000 of them. That averages to around 5,400 a day! These statistics were posted on the Barclays Cycle Hire web site at Key Facts this week.


Oy!
Bike-sharing is terminated in Cardiff, Wales. OYBike suspended its bike-sharing service there the last week of December. It was not able to find replacement funding for the Cardiff Council's subsidy which covered the £70,000 ($110,000 US) yearly operating cost. The service which started in November 2009, had 2,000 subscribers when it closed.



     Spain:


Barcelona's Bicing increases it annual membership cost from €35 ($45 US) to €44 ($56 US). It is estimated that the 120,000 annual memberships are only paying about 21% of the yearly operating cost, according to El País Catalona. The system is contemplating selling advertising on the bicycles or on the stations as a way to cover more of the operating expenses of the system.  

Update: 
€4 of the new Bicing membership is a mandatory insurance policy to cover third-party claims, first-party injury or damage and legal assistance for the user.


Asia:
     China:


Wuhan's 70,000 bikes tops Hangzhou's 60,600 bikes!



The City of Wuhan on the Yangtze River is claiming the title of the largest bike-sharing system in the world with 70,000 bikes! The Municipal Government for 2012 is consolidating the non affiliated bike-sharing companies into one system for the city.  New automated stations are starting to be installed in the city. According to Chinanews, the city wants to integrate all public transportation into a unified system. 


North America:
     USA:
Cities in the US have embraced bike-sharing during 2011. Many new systems were launched and many older systems were expanded.  These will be considered minor occurrences compared to the expectations for 2012. Just between New York City and Chicago, 13,000 new bikes will hit the American streets. Add to that, Chattanooga, Baltimore, the City of San Francisco with the Bay Peninsula, the City of Miami, Houston, probably Nashville, Charlotte and Portland will all put bike-share bikes on the street. Let us not forget that the suburban communities of both Boston and Washington, DC will rolling out more stations and bikes too. 2012 will give North America a high ranking in the Bike-sharing World.


South America:
     Brazil:


In Rio de Janeiro Samba now dances with a new name, BikeRio. It is an expansion of the old bike-sharing system which now covers much more of the city, and not just the beaches. There are now 600 bikes spread out over 35 stations with another 25 on the way for the start of 2012. It cost 5R$ ($2.70 US) for the one day or 10R$ ($5.45 US) for a monthly pass. Registration for the system is online for more than the one day pass. While the one day can be acquired by mobile telephone. BikeRio has increased popularity because the original system had cost 10R$ for just one day. There is no extra charge for the first sixty minutes of use, but it cost 5R$ for each additional hour. The new system gained sponsorship by itaú, the Brazilian Bank, at the end of October and has prospered since. BikeRio itaú is operated by Mobilidade same company that ran Samba.


Don't forget to check out bike-sharing in your part of the world on The Bike-sharing World Map.


images: The Bike-sharing Blog, El País CatalonaChinanews, XinFeidaBrasilAtual


Russell Meddin    bikesharephiladelphia.org

Monday, December 12, 2011

The Bike-sharing World - December 2011

HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND BEST WISHES FOR THE NEW YEAR


Much has happened in the world of bike-sharing recently. Here's a rundown of the news:
ASIA:
        China:
#1 Most Active System


Just west of Shanghai, China is the prosperous city of Kunshan. At the end of August of this year, the city launched its automated bike-sharing program, Kunshan Public Bicycle, with 3,000 bikes in 150 stations. At the beginning of this month, according to Kunshan News the system is reporting phenomenal usage figures. There are 79,000 subscribers, or card holders, with bikes being using on average over 16.6 times a day. The highest one day usage was 60,000 trips. This makes Kunshan Public Bicycle, the most active system in China and the World!
What contributes to the kind of huge usage? There are many factors. Firstly, there is a very low subscription price in the form of a deposit and the simplicity of paying overage charges, after the initial free first hour, are subtracted from the subscribers "added value card".  Secondly, there is incredible ease-of-use of the system. Mobile telephones can be used in place of the subscription cards to swipe at the individual docks to unlock the bikes. There are no numbers to compose or need to have a card at hand.




Then, there is a certain bicycle ethos with the population of Kunshan. It is the city where Shimano, one of the world's largest bicycle component manufactures has its China factory. Also you can be sure, there is no mandatory bicycle helmet law in Kunshan to stand in the way of serendipitous usage!


NORTH AMERICA:
        Canada:


The first two weeks of December finds many of the larger bike-sharing systems in the northern part of North America pulling up stakes and going into hibernation for the winter, however, Toronto bIXI is an exception. Keeping the system open through January, February and March 2012, Canada will remain a bike-sharing nation in the winter. They will show that they can roll with a chill in the air.



        USA:


The state of Florida will start its second major bike-sharing system with Broward B-cycle on December 14. If you are sunning yourself on the beaches of Ft. Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, or Hollywood (the other one), you will have three opportunities to join the opening celebrations, see these times and locations. There will be around 20 stations and 202 bikes in the eastern part of the county to start and more coming in 2012. Also, if you subscribe to the system before the end of this year, you can get $10.00 off the $45 annual subscription price by using this special code (BCYCLE2011).


      Mexico:

Ecobici is a few months shy of its second birthday and is reporting increased usage numbers. According to lainformacion, Ecobici's 30,000 subscribers have taken over 3,000,000 trips as of the beginning of this month, compared to a total of 2 million last year. With daily usage now around 8 trips per bike, it is not the same as Kunshan, but it is very respectable.




EUROPE:
     Germany:
As with most of the Scandinavian bike-sharing systems and some in North America, many of Germany's Call A Bike systems will also go into hibernation for the winter months this week. The larger systems of Hamburg, Berlin, and Stuttgart will remain open, but for those that close, there is the Winterpause Take It Home service. To help its subscribers who want to ride through the cold winter months, for €60 ($80 US) a bike-share bike can be rented and used as a personal bike until the system re-opens in April. I will gladly rent you one of my bikes for this amount during the winter as well!


images: Kunshan Public Bicycle, Sun Sentinel and previous The Bike-sharing Blog postings


Russell Meddin    bikesharephiladelphia.org

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Child-friendly Bike-sharing in Fukutsu

Electric-assist bicycles with child seats recently appeared in a bike-sharing system in Japan as part of the Fukutsu Community Cycle. On September 4, Fukutsu City, in the Fukuoka Prefecture of Japan, launched a one-year bike-share pilot project which will run until August 31, 2012.


The city is managing the project and electric-assisted bicycles were developed by Panasonic and the non-profit Town Mobile Network Kitakyushu, who are also operating the electric-assisted bike-sharing service in Kitakyushu City, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan (as detailed in The Bike-sharing Blog earlier this year).


The Fukutsu service consists of 30 electric-assisted bikes, four of which have child seats. Users sign up for the service online or at any manned stations. The bikes cost 200 Yen (US $2.60) per day.


Post and photos by Hiroki Nakamura

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Bike-sharing a Start for Life-sharing

Bike-sharing can be very romantic. A chance meeting at a docking station, a smile while passing one another on the street, or a knowing glance while waiting for the traffic signal to change could just be the beginning of many shared rides together.


Bike-sharing is very romantic. Over last weekend in Zhongzhan, China, a groom and his best men used the bike-sharing system to pick up the bride and go to their wedding.


But nothing can be as romantic as this fashion on a bike-share:

With millions and millions of rides on bike-shared bikes in the last few years, it's no wonder that the world is in love with bike-sharing.

images: Lovers - Ault's Photos, Wedding Party- Zhongzhan, Wedding Dress - Beautifullytold

Russell Meddin    bikesharephiladelphia.org

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Mo' Incentives to Cycle

Bicycling is good for physical health, environmental health, and the alleviation of traffic congestion, so encouraging bikes use is an essential public priority. Design firm LUNAR Europe, Green City e.V., and the University of Wuppertal, all based in Germany, have partnered to develop mo’, which offers compensation for the use of bicycles and public transportation. mo’ subscribers use their smartcard to rent standard bikes, cargobikes, ebikes, and cars, as well as use public transportation. Subscribers collect mo’ miles by riding bicycles or “eco-friendly transport” and the more mo’ miles one has, the cheaper it is to rent a car.


Users are given a bike tag that tracks the miles ridden on their own bike, while the mo’ card used to access public transportation records the distance travelled on trains or busses. Thus, mo’ provides an array of bikes to be shared in their program, while also rewarding users for using these environmentally responsible methods of transportation. The purpose of this multifaceted approach to encouraging sustainable transportation is to give users every incentive to change their habits over the long term. The driving force of mo’s design team, Dirk Hessenbruch, claims “mo’ points out concrete, feasible alternatives that are based on people’s needs. mo’ means mobility for the city of tomorrow.”

What could be mo' better than that?

Image Credit: Dexigner.com

p.s. - This is The Bike-sharing Blog's 300th post! We can't wait to see what the next 300 mo' posts will be about. 

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Coca-Cola, A Healthy Drink for Bike-sharing


The bike-sharing world was all abuzz in August with the cite in The Bike-sharing Blog about the study in The British Medical Journal that used data from Bicing in Barcelona to conclude that "bike-sharing saves lives."  This study was funded by the Coca-Cola Foundation which has as one of its missions: "to support access to exercise, physical activity and nutritional education programs, programs that motivate behavior modification, and programs that encourage lifestyle/behavioral changes." The Foundation continues to fund TAPAS (Transportation, Air Pollution and Physical Activities) which will oversee similar studies on the health benefits of bike-sharing in Paris, Copenhagen, Basel, Warsaw and Prague. It is very worthwhile that these benefits are substantiated with scholarly studies.


It is ironic though, that these studies are funded by a company which makes the high sugar content soft drinks that are a major cause of the obesity and type II diabetes from which many populations in the world are suffering. Eradication of these conditions is often cited as one of the goals of the operators of bike sharing systems.


We at The Bike-sharing Blog will update you with the findings of these new studies as they are available. Oh, yes share a Coke with a friend!


image: World of Coca-Cola


Russell Meddin    bikesharephiladelphia.org

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Hidden Contracts


Contracts for bike-sharing services between the municipality and operator are hard to find on the websites of local governments and some governments even prefer not to make the contract public. One would think the contract for a public service would be... well... public.

The Bike-sharing Blog needs your help! To benefit the Bike-sharing Community, send a link to your municipality's bike-sharing contract to us, so we may publish the link for the benefit of all. The Contracts section on the bottom left corner of the Blog needs beefing up as only two contracts are presently listed -- that of London, England, UK (Barclays Cycle Hire) and Arlington, Virginia, USA (Capital Bikeshare).

image credit: SmartData Collective

Friday, October 21, 2011

The Bike-sharing World: The last week of October 2011

Europe


UK: London - The little queen, the Prince and the Princess


In France, an endearing term for the Vélib' bikes are the petites reines, or little queens. This gives Parisian bike-sharers an air of royalty. Recent reports in British tabloids say that London royals Prince William and Princess Kate are using the little queens of Barclays Cycle Hire to get around London when they are in town visiting that other Queen. 


According to the Evening Standard, the royal couple have been seen using the bike-sharing system around the city. Their usage has been confirmed by a spokesperson from St. James Palace. It seems though that the royal couple does not use their "Boris Bike Tandem" wedding present, as seen in The Bike-sharing Blog in April, but travel on their own little queen.


Cyprus: Nicosia - easyBike


On October 26th, easyBike will be launching a new bike-sharing system in Nicosia, Cyprus. There will be around 300 bikes distributed through 27 stations in the greater Nicosia area. The system is a collaborative effort between the Greek company easyBike and the French company Smoove.


North America:


USA: Washington, DC - Raising More Capital


In less than two weeks, Washington, DC's and Arlington, VA's Capital Bikeshare will increase the cost of its causal user daily pass from $5 US to $7 US and change the $15 US 5-day pass to a 3-day pass, reports The Washington Post. 


Also, a recent decision will now allow Capital Bikeshare stations to be placed in one of Washington's most visited tourist areas, the National Mall. Could it be that the idea behind raising the price is the hope that now many more of the thousands of visitors to the Nation's Capital will use the system to sight-see and therefore help raise the capital needed to expand Capital Bikeshare!


Chattanooga, Tennessee
News reports out of Chattanooga say that Bike Chattanooga, the 300-bike/30-station system expected to launch next month, has been delayed until sometime in 2012. It seems that elements of the proposed system can not meet the "Buy American" clause of the Federal Transportation funding at this time.


Update: October 26, 2011, In response to what was reported in local Chattanooga news concerning the postponement of the launch of Bike Chattanooga, Philip Pugliese, Bicycle Coordinator, Outdoor Chattanooga, has informed the Bike-sharing Blog that the current system delay is fully associated with production timing and has nothing to do with Buy America or other Federal Transportation Administration issues. He wrote that while complexities associated with federal funding did take longer than expected, all have been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. 


South America


Columbia: Medellín - Students Graduate


Last week, the student inspired Bici-K bike-sharing began operation in Medellín, Colombia. The Bike-sharing Blog in August reported on these efforts. This inspiration has now become EnCicla which has deployed 145 bicycles in 6 stations over two different areas of Medellín. While it appears that the program was created to facilitate easier connections between two major universities and public transit, the system will have limited enrollment. 


EnCicla offers bikes for urban and trail use, so it is available for both transportation and recreation. The system was financed by the metropolitan government and the universities. We hope to see this program prosper and expand to serve all of Medellín.


images: Royals - BarclayseasyBike, The Bike-sharing Blog, Universidad Eafit 


Russell Meddin     bikesharephiladelphia.org