Capital Bikeshare Cost Recovery in Arlington, VA

How did Arlington’s portion of Capital Bikeshare do in its second year of service? Are Arlingtonians and visitors using the service? How many trips are made and how much was spent? These questions and a lot more are discussed in Arlington County’s “FY12 Summary Report on Capital Bikeshare”. The report’s highlights include the service’s continued cost recovery growth, annual key indicator data, member survey analysis, and accomplishments.

Not to spoil the conclusion for you, but yes, the service had a good year. The County expanded Capital Bikeshare throughout the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor during this time period, more than doubling its number of stations from 18 to 41 and bikes from 123 to 286. With the additional stations and bikes came an increased cost recovery ratio – the percentage of revenues divided by expenses. Fiscal Year 2011 had a 53% cost recovery ratio and FY12 saw an increase to 64%. 

Arlington’s portion of the service had $411,000 in revenues from memberships, user fees, and sponsorships and $473,000 in operations expenses, plus $170,000 in management and marketing – totaling $643,000 in expenses. The number of trips starting and ending in Arlington increased by about 280% to 88,613 (trips starting) and 86,438 (trips ending). The number of miles ridden in Arlington increased 343% to about 95,000 miles, which helped remove nearly 64,000 pounds of CO2 from the air. The service also got us more active and we burned over 4.1 million calories to be fit.

The Report also discusses our accomplishments, such as our partnership with Bank on DC, Transit Development Plan, map panels design updated, marketing campaign, and call center improvements. The report can be found online at BikeArlington.com. 

(cross-posted on BikeArlington.com)