The Bike-sharing World - End of 2013

2013 comes to an end with over 675 cities worldwide with operating 3rd generation bike-shaing services. From the largest cities to the smallest towns on 5 continents, bike-shaing is rolling as an intergral part of public transit. At the end of 2013, a global fleet of approximatedly 700,000 bikes are avaliable in 33,000 stations to use as another way to get from point A to point B.

All data is from The Bike-sharing World Map www.bikesharingworld.com

In 2013 there was a phenomnal increase of 60% in number of cities launching bike-sharing over those in 2012:

In 2012: 95 new cities. In 2013: 152 new cities

Comparison of new bike-sharing lauches by year

The winner for the most new bike-sharing cities in 2013 was: China! Listen to the handlebar bells ringing in celebration. China led the way with 65 new cities. Italy came in second with 20 new services. The USA came in third with 15 new cities -- which is a 90% increase over 2012. 

In 2013, both Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa started feasibility studies for bike-sharing. Soon every continent except Antartica will have bike-sharing services, but rumors are that the penguins are working to change that.

In the last quarter of the year, China excellerated the opening of new services and the increase of the size of existing ones as a direct response to a blanket of pollution that is still covering the country. In the last week of December, four cities launched with over 1,000 bikes each. 

The Bike-sharing World Map for the end of December 2013, shows 678 municipalities with active bike-sharing services. Also 186 municipalities appear as either constructing, planning, or actively studying bike-sharing.

What can we expect to see in 2014? 

The growth of bike-sharing in Asia will not abate. It will still grow in China, but services will begin to be seen in Southeast Asia and the subcontinent.

There will be continued growth of bike-sharing in South America. Buenos Aires, Argentina will add automated stations to its successful city service. The Mayor of Saõ Paulo, Brazil is calling for consolidation of that city's multiple services. All of the countires along the Andes spine are developing bike-sharing.

Unfortunately, Australian bike-sharing is still hampered by the mandatory helmet laws. The services there just haven't been able to capture the usage numbers seen elsewhere in the world. Australia probably will not see much growth in bike-sharing until there is a change in the laws or an exemption for bike-sharing.

North America will continue to have the same growth shown over the last year. Many third tier municipalities in the USA will start services. More Mexican cities will try to duplicate the success of the ever exspanding Ecobici in Mexico City.

Pedelec bikes at Villa Borghese in Rome

In Europe there begins to be more application of "pedelecs" (electrical assist bicycles) in bike-sharing. In 2014 both Madrid and Copenhagen-Federiksberg will have pedelec systems. In both Spain and Italy, older bike-sharing services are being updated with pedelecs. Milan annouced that it will add 1,000 pedelecs to its successful BikeMi.

While 2013 was a big year for bike-sharing, it's very likely 2014 will be the start of a new era as new technologies develop and more municipalities implement the concept with their own unique flair.

images: Rome

The statistics quoted above come from The Bike-sharing World Map. It is the premiere resource for information on cities with bike-sharing. 

The easy web address for viewing the map is www.bikesharingworld.com.

Follow the Map on Twitter@BikesharingMap

See the O'Brien Global Bike Share Map which shows real time bike usage in many cities!

Russell Meddin               bikesharephiladelphia.org

Spare a Dime? Melbourne Looking for a Sponsor

The State of Victoria in Australia is looking to build Melbourne Bike Share into a public-private partnership with a sponsor that will expand the service from its roughly 50 stations into more parts of the city and suburbs in exchange for naming and branding rights, according to The Age newspaper.

The Age states, "Bicycle Network Victoria's Garry Brennan said Melbourne Bike Share was currently too small and sparse and could not be viable without expansion.

"Patronage has grown every year since the scheme was launched in 2010. It had its best-ever month in January, when 18,809 rentals were recorded. Last month there were 12,781 rentals, an average of 421 rides a day," notes The Age. The January record is just over 1 trip/bike/day with the roughly 535 bikes on the street..

Compared to Capital Bikeshare in the Washington, D.C. area where there are 300 stations, versus Melbourne's roughly 50, there was a record of 296,000 trips taken in August 2013. Even taking into account Capital Bikeshare being six-fold larger than Melbourne Bike Share, and the network effect of a larger service which leads to more trips being taken, this is a pretty marked difference.

For Melbourne and the State of Victoria to let Melbourne Bike Share become the world-class bike transit service that it should be, Victoria could once again consider removing its helmet law for adults. It's holding back use of its bike transit system and in the desire to protect the public's well-being, may be an over-protective function which has a result of lowering physical activity as studies have suggestion, leading to an overall negative net result.

Bike-sharing is a relatively safe mode of transport. In the USA there have been no fatal bike-share crashes in the country's short 5-year experimentation with the concept. For comparison, Capital Bikeshare has 88 reported crashes in the 3 years since its inception a couple months after Melbourne Bike Share launched and over 5,894,375 trips. This is one reported crash for every 66,981 trips.

Things aren't Top Hat up in Brisbane, Queensland either. The scheme has only had a little over 500,000 trips in its three years since October 2010. What should have been a financial benefit to the city hasn't materialized because of low ridership, according to The Brisbane Times. Changing the fare structure, tying payment with a transit card, and increasing the hours of operation haven't been able to overcome the damper that the mandatory helmet law does to ridership. Again from The Brisbane Times, Paul French, of the Brisbane Bicycle User Group, said his group is still hopeful the State Government would take on board the proposal for the scheme to be exempted from helmet laws.

In other sponsorship news from the Commonwealth, Barclays has made public that it will not continue its sponsorship of the London Cycle Hire service in two years once its contract ends. This article from Mirror isn't clear whether Barclays sees the brand damaged after, sadly, a customer was killed by a tractor trailer -- being the service's first fatality in 3.5 years of operation. Or the sponsorship package changing as Transport for London's Graeme Craig states, "Cycle hire will become part of a much wider and larger cycling sponsorship offer encompassing cycle hire and the major new commitments made in the Mayor's cycling vision - new flagship segregated routes through the heart of London, new Quietway backstreet routes, along with cycle training and potentially other forms of active travel." 

Either way, looks like Boris Bikes may be getting a new paint job in two years. And I was just getting comfortable with Barclays blue.


photo credit: The Age

New Bike-Sharing Planning Guide out Today

Now available, the month long delayed publishing of The Bike-Sharing Planning Guide from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) has finally come after being announced at the Share Use Mobility Summit in San Francisco, California, earlier this year.

It's a good read. There are now close to 670 bike-sharing cities world-wide. This makes for a good sample from which to glean some best practices and do's and don'ts. During 2013, 136 new cities debuted bike-sharing. That is a 65% increase in new services over 2012. More and more cities and towns are riding bike-sharing into a Critical Mass. A new Planning Guide can only help make new bike-share programs better and smarter. Take a quick look at this information below from the Guide:

Get a copy of this Planning Guide at www.itdp.org/library/publications/details/the-bike-share-planning-guide/.

The statistic quoted above come from The Bike-sharing World Map. It is the premiere resource for information on cities with bike-sharing. 

The new easy web address for viewing the map is www.bikesharingworld.com.

Follow the Map on Twitter@BikesharingMap

See the O'Brien Global Bike Share Map which shows real time bike usage in over 100 cities!

image: ITDP

Russell Meddin               bikesharephiladelphia.org

New Pricing Structure Needed

A major barrier to the financial sustainability and growth of bike-share services is how we price it. The predominant method of on-going funding of bike-share services in North America is through membership and usage fees. As the program manager for Arlington, Virginia's portion of Capital Bikeshare I see in the monthly financial reports which show that membership fees are the bulk of this revenue with usage fees being a minor amount. The warmer months can pay for themselves, but the colder months do not, which ensures this 62-station portion of the service has covered about 60% of its operating costs during the most recent fiscal year. While good for a transit service, why can't we do better for the long-run?

Pricing structures of bike-sharing services in North America and much of the world tend to provide the first 30 minutes of every trip for free with increasing fees for additional 30-minute periods. Many bike-share services allow for redocking of one's bike and a resetting of the clock for the same trip, but on a new 30-minute period. This is the equivalent of someone touching their toe onto the platform from the subway car while stopped at a station and not having to pay for the remainder of their trip. For bike-share this is great for increasing the number of trips, albeit by double-counting some trips, but it's bad for the bike-share transit agency which is trying to cover its operating costs like any other transit service and not getting enough help from the local, state, or Federal government.

The common bike-share pricing structure is odd as it's so different from other established modes of transit. Other modes tend to have either a fee per trip or a week/month pass with unlimited ridership. Annual transit passes are rare and from a quick unscientific Google search, seem to be offered mainly by universities and by transit agencies, however, directed to employers for their employees.

What we need to try out is a new model that would allow people to use the service without needing to "join" by paying a decent sum at the on-set. There may need to be a minor fee to obtain a fob or smartcard fare media to use the system, however, beyond that we should have in place a fee per trip for the first 30 - 60 minutes and charge a fee that is lower than, but relative to other modes of transit within the respective region. This fee, say $1.00 - $1.50, would be instead of the initial 30-minute free period. Extended rentals beyond the initial period still would be required to pay increasing fees based on trip duration. Changing pricing models after the public has become familiar with the existing model is risky, however, it could be introduced as a pilot and concurrently to our existing model to gain data on its uptake before any decision were to be made to either keep or scrap it.

The point of this change is to bring more people into the fold as bike-share customers by taking down the barriers to do so. I likely wouldn't take a bus at all if I had to pay a one time fee of $100 for an unlimited service that I presently only infrequently use. We need infrequent customers on bike-share, not just the daily commuters. There are about 2 million residents in the four jurisdictions that offer Capital Bikeshare, but only 23,000 of them are annual members. There's a lot of room to grow.

Other benefits of a fee per trip pricing structure are that low-income individuals and the unbanked could pay as they go in smaller amounts, rather than an initial lump sum which is less affordable. Bike-share agencies could retain individuals as customers who for change of home or work or other reasons, don't find themselves using bike-share as often and would otherwise drop their membership. Also, the customers who use the service the most would pay more under the fee per trip model, which is not a bad thing as they're putting the most wear and tear on the system.

The IRS recently determined in the U.S. that bike-share isn't transit and therefore won't extend a tax-free commuter benefit to employers who wish to give this benefit to their employees, as they can for other transit services. I've also heard rumors that the United States Dept. of Transportation (USDOT) also doesn't consider bike-share as transit partially because of this fee structure that we have in place. Getting dedicated USDOT funding to help with operating bike-share services -- as other transit modes have in the U.S. -- is not being offered by the Feds because of bike-share's perceived "un-transitness" that is a large part due to the existing pricing structure that is more similar to car-sharing, which indeed isn't transit. The pricing structure needs to be changed to improve the financial health of bike-share services, so we can grow the size and number of services and ensure funding exists to operate them now and well into the future.

Bike-share has provided a great boost in bike mode share to most likely all jurisdictions which have implemented it. A short-term boost is great, but to ensure bike-share is a permanent and viable infrastructure improvement to our cities, counties, and regions, we need to make sure that it's here to stay and not simply a blip in creativity from the roaring 2010s.

The Bike-sharing World - The last week of October 2013

SOUTH AMERICA:

Chile:

Santiago

Slick advisement for Bikesantiago, where the tire isn't a slick

Last Friday Santiago, Chile launched its 2nd bike-sharing program with Bikesantiago. The program with 300 bikes in 25 stations, around the Vitacura section of the city, uses B-cycle equipment. The program is sponsored by one of South America's largest Banks, Itaú. This bank also sponsors many bike-share programs in Brazil and a seasonal one in Uruguay. Bikesantiago currently only offers monthly memberships at 4,999 pesos ($9.85 US), half year memberships at 24,950 pesos ($49.20 US) and yearly memberships at 49,999 ($98.50 US). As with most bike-share programs there is a 30 minute initial period at no extra charge, then 500 peso (about $1.00 US) for the next 30 minutes and 1000 pesos for the next 30 minutes. Santiago hopes to eventually have 3,000 bikes in 300 stations. This is the first deployment of a large North American system in South America and the first B-cycle system outside the USA.

NORTH AMERICA:

Mexico:

Mexico City

Also last week Ecobici bike-share announced not only was it expanding its service area south into the Benito Juárez section of the City, but there is Bigger News! It has become the first North American bike-share program to be part of a city's multi-modal transit card for the bus, the metro, the trolleybus and parking meters according to Croninca.com. Current Ecobici card holders just need add the service to their plastic RFID card. New customers can add the Ecobici subscription to a new multi-modal card. Mexico City has caught the wave of the "single media fare card" future!

USA:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:

Yes, now that the issuance of a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a bike-share program is so frequent, it no longer qualifies as news. But even before this blog reported on January 21, 2008 that the Bike Share Philadelphia Forum an Astounding Success, this blogger has been working non stop to make bike-share happen in the city of Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Bike Share RFP is just the beginning of a journey started almost seven years ago!

Fullerton, California:

BikeLink is about to begin a bike-share program in Fullerton, California. This is part of a pilot for the Orange County Transportation Authority for 165 bikes in 15 stations. It is a really good re-use of some of the Anaheim, California pilot program from Bike Nation. According to information from Bike Nation, it plans on co-investing in the program in Fullerton by adding 350 bikes in 35 stations. It is great to finally see bike-sharing about to start rolling in the Los Angeles basin.

Washington, DC:

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the US Government has made the determination that the cost of bike-sharing memberships does not qualify for the Transportation (Commuting) Benefits Program under Fringe Benefit Rules for transit, according to Forbes.com. Even though the rules allow a $20 a month reimbursement for bicycle commuting to work, from an employer, the IRS determined that bike-sharing was not mass transit or a transit pass, nor was it a purchase or maintenance cost to get to work. So no reduced rate ride! There is never a free ride!

EUROPE:

United Kingdom:

London:

Since Transport for London (TfL) Barclays Cycle Hire  sparked a new way to get around London almost three and a half years ago, there is now shocking news that there will be electric cycle hire bikes! As part of London Mayor Boris Johnson's next bicycle plan, according to the Evening Standard, the hillier parts of the City will get several hundred electric or electric assist bike-share bikes. They are not to be part of the current system, but a complement in places where a regular Barclays Cycle Hire could not be running up the hill!

THE WORLD:

The Bike-sharing World Map is the premiere resource for information on cities with bike-sharing. Here is the new easy web address for viewing the map: www.bikesharingworld.com

Follow the Map on Twitter@BikesharingMap

See the O'Brien Global Bike Share Map which shows real time bike usage in over 100 cities!

images: Movit, BikeLink, IRS, Lewis Whyld/PA-the Gaurdian London

Russell Meddin              bikesharephiladelphia.org

MetroBike Update on Capital Bikeshare

Today I have two Capital Bikeshare items to note and I'll begin with a little shameless marketing. First, MetroBike is assisting Montgomery County, Maryland (USA) with station site planning and implementation of their first 51 stations, which will be part of the regional Capital Bikeshare service. MetroBike has been working rapidly to research and prepare these sites with some wonderful County staff for the upcoming launch this week. For our friends in the Washington, D.C. area, the launch event is Friday, September 27th at 10:30am at the intersection of Maryland & Montgomery Avenues in Rockville, MD.

This will be the first bike-sharing service in the State of Maryland and will be the fourth jurisdiction to join Capital Bikeshare. These 51 stations will connect the inner suburbs of Friendship Heights & Bethesda on D.C.'s northwest edge and Silver Spring & Takoma Park on D.C.'s northeast edge. Also, there will be a satellite pod of stations in the less dense suburban and exurban Rockville & Shady Grove neighborhoods. These stations will connect with Metro's Red Line (subway) with downtown Rockville, housing, a shopping center, and the Life Sciences Center, which includes a hospital and various science-focused companies and universities. This satellite pod will highly focus on the first-mile/last-mile trip for commuters who live and work in this area and use the subway as part of their commute. It should be a fascinating study about how bike-sharing succeeds in the suburbs and exurbs. Academics take note.

Additionally, MetroBike serves as the program manager for Arlington County, Virginia's (USA) portion of Capital Bikeshare. We recently completed the Arlington County FY13 Summary Report on Capital Bikeshare which details Arlington's portion of the regional Capital Bikeshare service. The document discusses the service's growth, successes and challenges, and includes a three-year examination of many key statistics: like trips, number of customers, miles, and crashes. A graphic showing Arlington's total cost recovery since inception is below.

It's a good read to learn more about how Arlington's portion of Capital Bikeshare is doing after its first three years of service. The County has achieved a 61% total cost recovery this past fiscal year, but has a ways to go. Here are the stats from the document for a preview:

Capital Bikeshare just celebrated its third birthday on September 20 and regionally the service has reached 5.3 million trips with 248 stations and 2,073 bikes. Not too shabby as the Washington, D.C. region continues to strive to become ever more bike-friendly -- and is succeeding.

The Bike-sharing World - Third Week of September 2013

EUROPE:
Italy:

Bike-sharing on Both Sides of the Law

Arezzo:
  

Police Officer - Arezzo, Itally

In celebrating European Mobility Week, the citizens of Arezzo, Italy have been asked to forgo their cars and to get around town by bicycle, or by foot. In keeping with this goal, the local bike-sharing program, ARbike, is giving the police access to their bike-share bicycles. The Police will use these bicycles to patrol the city and keep the police cars and motorcycles in the city garage according to the news source: ArezzoNotizie.

Over in Milan, Italy, MilanoToday is reporting that a stolen bikeMI bike-share was used in an illicit drug transaction. The Police arrested both the buyer and the seller. The recovered drug bike was dragged back to the station! 

Milan:

Secretive bikeMi Pedaled in darkness

This shows that Bike-sharing is so popular that everyone is using it, no matter on what side of the law, one rides!

NORTH AMERICA:

USA:

San Francisco:

This Summit, in San Francisco, California on October 10th and 11th, 2013, is one of the first conferences in the United States covering bike-sharing which is open to the public. It is not just for government or transportation officials, but for everyone interested in the bike-sharing phenomenon. The Shared Use Mobility Summit will have speakers who were instrumental in making Bike-sharing happen in North America and Europe. There will be panel discussions on how to make Bike-sharing work well. There is also the possibility that new bike-share systems will be on display at the Summit!

There is still time for discounted registrations through September 16, 2013: Register Now

The web address for the Summit: sharedusesummit.org. If you or your city are planning a Bike-sharing program, this Summit should not be missed! Oh yes, there will be segments on car-sharing too!

Mexico:

Mexico City:

Ecobici Ride - Mexico City

Impressive usage numbers were reported this summer for Mexico City's Ecobici. With over 3250 bicycles in active use throughout 268 stations, by the end of July, over 9 million trips were taken since the program started. The number of subscribers has exceeded 95,000. On August 28, 2013 over 28,800 trips were taken in one day. Earlier this year, the system was finally opened for daily use by non-residents according to El Sol de Mexico and El Universl. 

Just as impressive, are the results of studies by MercadoLibre, the online retailer, and The Del La Riva Group - Mexico. These studies, as reported in tera-economia, attribute the success of Ecobici as one of the factors in the 50% increase of online bicycle purchases in Mexico. This is another instance that shows bike-sharing helps stimulate bicycle business in North America.

THE WORLD:

Who will be the 4,000,000th person to view The Bike-sharing World Map? In less than four years four million people from all over the world have come to recognize The Bike-sharing World Map as the premiere resource for information on cities with bike-sharing. Are you the 4 millionth viewer? Here is the new easy web address for viewing the map: www.bikesharingworld.com

(Update: The four millionth viewer studied the map on September 16, 2013)

Follow the Map on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/BikesharingMap

See the O'Brien Global Bike Share Map which shows real time bike usage in over 100 cities!

images: Arrezo Notizie, BikeMi Calendar, mas por mas/DF,

Russell Meddin              bikesharephiladelphia.org

The Bike-sharing World: First Week of September 2013

NORTH AMERICA:
USA:
California Dreaming:
San Francisco, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Redwood City, and San Jose

Last week, Bay Area BikeShare debuted in five California communities: San Francisco, San Jose, Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Redwood City. Billed as a "pilot program", it has the possibility of changing the direction of bike-sharing in North America. Although, it is not the first North American regional bike-sharing program, Capital Bikeshare and The Hubway are regional, but it is the first single program that serves non-contiguous cities. It takes to the extreme, the concept of using personal mobility to solve the "first mile/kilometer" and "last mile/kilometer" problem of fixed route transit.* 

Caltrain Route

With Bay Area BikeShare, a user can pick up a shared bike and ride to a Caltrain Rail Station, dock the bike, ride the train to another select rail station, then take another shared bike to a final destination. This program could become the template for all subsequent programs where there is inter-city transit.

The Bay Area program allows true A to B transportation over a large region.This program takes the European rail station bike system concept like OV-fiets, Scotty Blue Bikes, Call a bike, Publibike, and the new British Bike & Go into being real bike-sharing and not bike rental. Unlike the European system, with the Bay Area program bikes can be returned to any bike station. There is no penalty when the bike is docked at another bike station rather than the one from where it was taken.

With success, we hope, Bay Area BikeShare will quickly expand to its original proposed starting size of 1,000 bikes in 100 stations. Then as it comes out of training, bring bike-sharing to the entire Bay Area.

San Francisco

Since we know everyone can't get enough information about bike-sharing, whether it's new, old, or the future, there is a place to get that shared information. The Shared Use Mobility Summit in San Francisco on October 10th and 11th will have demonstrations and panel discussion on bike-sharing. There will be speakers and experts on everything that is bike-sharing and possibly debuts of new bike-sharing systems. Oh yes, there will be segments on car-sharing too!

There is still time for discounted registration until September 16, 2013: Register Now

The web address for the Summit: sharedusesummit.org. If you or your city are planning a bike-sharing program, this Summit should not be missed!

EUROPE:

FRANCE:

Dunkirk:

A little over 73 years ago this summer, thousands of boats and ships streamed out of the French port of Dunkirk to cross the English Channel. As of September 2, 2013, in a bad analogy, English tourists to this port city will see that Dunkirk's bike-sharing ship has come in with the start of dk'vélo. Beginning with 100 bikes in 20 stations the program is planning to grow to 280 bikes in 34 stations. In keeping with the bike-sharing movement towards transit integration, dk'vélo's €10 annual pass ($13.00 US) is only €5 when a subscriber also has the dk'bus pass. The 24-hour pass to bike around Dunkirk is only €1, allowing each trip of 30 minutes or less at no extra charge. The next additional 30 minutes of continuous use is another €1 and then €2 each additional 30 minutes thereafter.

ASIA:

CHINA:

Hangzhou:

The newest replacement bikes for the Hangzhou Public Bicycle Service will have two different bike station locking devices according to Hangzhou.com.cn. Since 2008, Hangzhou has utilized a system for locking bikes similar to the French CycloCity "bornette" that requires a down tube side mounted locking device for anchoring the bicycles to the single post or column.

Because the Hangzhou system is now installing three sided glass wall multi-purpose covered bike stations, it is cheaper and easier to install a single rail along the back wall of the station, similar to the Clear Channel SmartBike system, for docking the bicycles. Each lock on the rail has a card reader and is interactive. The new bicycles will be able to use either system. The Hangzhou Public Bicycle Tech Center is marketing this new system to other Chinese cities.

AUSTRALIA:

AUSTRALIA:

 

A friend to the Bike-sharing Blog in Brisbane, Elliot Fishman, has recently published a study on the Barriers to Bike-sharing in Australia: The Barriers and facilitators to public bicycle scheme use: A quantitative approach. Generally these studies carry a substantial price for a copy, but for this month and next, Elliot Fishman's study is available at no charge: Download at the web site: Transportation Research Part F.

THE WORLD:

There are now nearly 4,000,000 page views for The Bike-sharing World Map. There is also a new easy web address for the map: www.bikesharingworld.com

The Bike-sharing World Map is the #1 resource for bike-sharing systems world wide. It shows new systems coming online which might not be covered in The Bike-sharing Blog. With constant updates, it is  the best way to keep up with the ever changing bike-sharing world.

Follow the Map on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/BikesharingMap

See the O'Brien Global Bike Share Map. It shows real time bike usage in over 100 Cities!

images: Bay Area BikeShare, dk'vélo, Hangzhou, CityCycle, and Melbourne, 

Russell Meddin              bikesharephiladelphia.org

* moving a transit user from his starting point to the transit line and from the transit line to the user's destination.

The Bike-sharing World - Mid August 2013

Europe:
United Kingdom:
                        London, England:

One of the first instances of an industrial action in the Bike-sharing world began today with Barclays Cycle Hire according to Skynews. The National Union of Maritime and Transportation Workers began a 48 hour protest against SERCO,the operating company that manages the Bike-sharing program for Transport for London, TfL. The threat of the protest caused many users of the program to take caution and shy away this morning. Though no appreciable disruption has taken place, less than 500 bikes were out at any one time during rush hour this morning. This compares to nearly three times as many on a regular rush hour morning.

Generally bike-sharing is the service that intercedes to ease transit problems in transportation industrial actions. It is good to see that in this type of situation, there have be no appreciable difficulties in London.

UPDATE: August 14, 2012, Industrial action completed. System had no major problems. An article on Barclays Cycle Hire employees: In Action .
On a lighter side in London, last week Mayor Boris Johnson made a gift to the newborn Prince George, third in line to the British Throne, of Cycle Hire Tricycle according to The Express.

As readers of the this Blog recall Mayor Johnson gave a Cycle Hire tandem to Prince George's parents as a wedding gift! See Royal Bike Sharing April 29, 2011

The World: The Bike-sharing World Map is the #1 resource for bike-sharing systems world wide. It shows new systems coming online which might not be covered in The Bike-sharing Blog. With constant updates, it is  the best way to keep up with the ever changing bike-sharing world.

Follow the Map on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/BikesharingMap

See the O'Brien Global Bike Share Map. It shows real time bike usage in 100 Cities!

image: Barclays Cycle Hire, Twitter, Trike-The Express

Russell Meddin              bikesharephiladelphia.org

Sneak Peak at Copenhagen's Cykel DK

 

Tak (thanks) goes to my friends in the Cities of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg for a sneak peak at their upcoming bike-sharing service, Cykel DK. This new uber high-tech service is to launch this fall in Copenhagen and Frederiksberg, Denmark and will have some unique features such as an Android tablet with built-in GPS, real-time train departures and ticket integration, and real-time info on available bikes and docks in the area. Unfortunately, real-time Tour de France footage won't be available with this version of the software. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this on version 2.0. 

  

There will be 1,260 bikes at 65 stations and the service, of course, will be available 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. Customers will use the tablet to enter their credit card info to unlock the bike. Tourists and other casual customers will pay 20 DKK (about 3.50 USD) per hour. Frequent customers can purchase a membership for 50 DKK (about 8.85 USD) per month.

Cykel DK is a non-profit that will be operated by the cities of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg plus DSB -- Denmark's national railway system. For the Blog's U.S. readers, can you imagine Amtrak getting into the bike-share business?! It makes so much sense as an extension of their existing inter-city mobility provision. And Amtrak wouldn't even be the second or third national railway to do this: Deutsche Bahn in Germany, Dutch Railways in The Netherlands, and SNCB in Belgium already do this, plus I'm sure a handful of others.

I'm not sure if I've seen a bike-share technology that will truly take us into the 4th generation of bike-share, but from what I've read so far, it's looking like this could be it.

Here's their video with more info.

More information about Cykel DK is at http://www.byogpendlercyklen.dk and gobike is at http://gobike.com.

Image credits: Ursula Bach and gobike