CitiBank Sponsorship opens new branch in Miami for CitiBike

The Bike-sharing World, First Week of October 2014

USA:

CitiBank has found that sponsoring bike-sharing is good for business. It now has signed up to be the title sponsor for DecoBike in both Miami Beach and Miami, Florida.

CitiBank and DecoBike announced today that the combined Miami Beach and soon to launch Miami, Florida bike-sharing programs will be called CitiBike. This is in addition to New York City's bike-share service which operates under the same name. CitiBike Miami's website is www.citibikemiami.com. The combined cities will have over 1,750 bikes in 170 stations. The new Miami CitiBike, opening in November will bring to South Florida a new shaft-drive bicycle and new solar powered stations with touch screen kiosks.

Last year in a Digiday article about CitiBank sponsoring bike-share, Elyssa Gray of creative marketing for CitiBank indicated that after only a few months sponsoring bike-sharing that it was headed in an extremely positive direction. “People are talking about and sharing the program in such a positive way — it’s really becoming a part of the fabric of [the] City,” said Gray, “These kinds of opportunities for a brand don’t come by every day.”

In South Florida: "We are very excited to have the commitment of CitiBank as the title sponsor for our successful Miami Beach program as well as for our new expansion into the downtown Miami area and surrounding neighborhoods," says Colby Reese, co-founder of DecoBike. "Miami is an ever-growing metropolis and bike-sharing has already been embraced by our residents and visitors who have logged more than 4.5 million rides in Miami Beach, and we expect similar usage in downtown Miami and its surrounding neighborhoods."

The Bike-sharing Blog believes that title sponsors for bike-sharing programs is a policy to bank on!

image: Citibikemiami.com

Russell Meddin            bikesharephiladelphia.org

Keep in touch with The Bike-sharing World with The Bike-sharing World Map. It is the premiere resource for information on cities with bike-sharing programs and the complement to The Bike-sharing Blog. The easy web address for viewing the map is www.bikesharingworld.com.

Follow the Map on Twitter@BikesharingMap

The Bike-sharing World Mid-November 2012

NORTH AMERICA:
USA

San Diego, California:

Decobike at Petco Ball Park San Diego

San Diego is to be decorated with bike-sharing from Decobike.

Today the City of San Diego announced in a press release that it has picked Decobike, the master of ocean side bike-sharing, to provide the city with a new program. Covering the area stretching from La Jolla to Downtown San Diego along the coast, there will be 1,800 bikes in 180 stations to start. Projected schedule to launch the system is Fall 2013. It is to be a comprehensive system with about 4 stations on average per 2.5 km² (one square mile) and a bicycle to resident ratio of about 1 to 155 in the areas served.. This will position San Diego to become one of North America's most utilized bike sharing programs. With Decobike picked for San Diego, Southern California is no longer being considered a reservation of Bike Nation.

Fullerton, California:

Speaking of Bike Nation, more of the Los Angeles basin will be covered by Bike Nation. This week Fullerton, California picked Bike Nation to develop it's bike-sharing pilot program of 165 bikes in 15 stations. It hopes to expand this program to 515 bikes in 50 stations in two phases. No start date was stated in the announcement. Bike Nation now has programs planned for Anaheim, Fullerton, Los Angeles, Venice and Westwood California.

Long Beach, New York:

Green Decobike Station on shattered boardwalk

Speaking of DecoBike, when Hurricane Sandy hit Long Beach, NY, it tore up the ocean side boardwalk, but left this green Decobike Station standing. Before the hard hurricane winds, Decobike removed the bikes and put them into safe storage. All the stations have survived, but it will be a little time before the boardwalk is replaced and the Decobikes will begin rolling again.

New York City, New York:

Citi Bike Storage Building 293

Speaking of Hurricane Sandy, reports in the New York Times and New York Post indicate that the first floor storage area of the Brooklyn Navy Yard building where the hundreds of bikes and stations for New York's Citi Bike program are housed, took in between 1.5 and 2 meters (4 to 6 feet) of water with the Hurricane's ocean surge. A NYCDOT spokesperson indicated that there was damage to the equipment, but it was too early to determine the extent of the problem.
We all hope that there will be no further delay in deployment of Citi Bikes.

Update: According to the Montreal Gazette, a spokesperson for the equipment supplier to the Citi Bike program said that hundreds of bikes and many stations suffered damage from the hurricane. The article also indicated that before the hurricane, ongoing test of the program's software, which had delayed the start of Citi Bike in July, were not going well.

Boston, Massachusetts:

Boston's regional bike-share, The Hubway, held a contest to determine the best visualization of the trip data for 500,000 of its rides. The Hubway Data Visualization Challenge has announce the winners. The First Place award goes to Ta Chiraphadhanakul. All the other winners can been seen on the Data Visualization web page. There were 67 entries all of which are very good. We're sorry our friend Ollie didn't make the top 10!


images: NBC 7, Decobike, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Hubway, Bike Nation

Russell Meddin       bikesharephiladelphia.org

Bike-sharing Creates Job

With the U.S. political conventions next month and Presidential election in November, there is much talk about the nation's economy and job creation. During this time of budget cuts to important Federal and state programs, it is important to consider how the bike-sharing industry is contributing to the local economy of the cities and towns where these services exist and the jobs they provide. In addition to being employment, these jobs are green, improving the local environment and air quality. Right from their start-up, bike-sharing services can contribute 10 - 20 jobs to the local economy for smaller implementations and 30 - 50 jobs for larger ones.

A sample of bike-sharing services in the U.S. and Europe shows the following full-time and part-time jobs created for the various services. (Click on the chart below to enlarge.)

Not only has bike-sharing become a job creator, but it has also helped people get to their jobs. With annual memberships between $50 - $80, people are getting to work fast, adding daily activity to their lives to stay fit, and saving money. In fact, survey analysis by Capital Bikeshare in the Washington, D.C. region, suggests that members saved $819 per year on personal travel costs which is an annual savings of $15 million among the service's 18,000 at the time of the survey.

The Bike-sharing World -The First Week of July 2012

NORTH AMERICA

  Canada

           Vancouver, British Columbia

The Bike-sharing Blog attended last week’s Velo-city Global 2012 Conference. Bike-sharing was one of the pivotal themes of the week.

The Bike-share Bloggers, Paul deMaio and I made presentations on the topics of Municipal Best Practices and Maping the Explosion of Bike-sharing, the latter with the help of Oliver O’Brien of CASA and Andrea Beatty of B-cycle,  co-presented on the topics of Bike-sharing as an extention of public transit with representatives from Vancouver, Boston and Montréal and co-hosted roundtable discussions on Regional Bike-sharing Lessons with representatives from San Francisco and Boston.

There were presentations on bike-sharing from the four corners of the globe and the standard reference of everyone was our very own, The World Bike-sharing Map! 

Public Bike Systems Company supplied bicycles to all the hundreds of attendees to the Conference

One of more interesting exhibits at the conference, was a new bike-share bike out of Switzerland, Velobility. The bike centralizes all the electronics and the mechanics into a one “box” drive train, called the Ridebox.

The Ridebox has the capacity to be configured as strictly mechanical or as a pedelec with single or multiple speeds. It could have active GPS to track the bike and special remote locking to disable the bike. It could be configured to recognize a users’ RFID and set the bike to that user’s preferences. All of this is secure in the enclosed belt drive box. There is more information on the web sites Velobility and Innovations.  Every bike-share vendor at the conference was suitably impressed. Types of these bikes are now in use in several cities in Switzerland and Germany. 


To this bike-share blogger, this bicycle was really the first indication of 4th generation bike-sharing! Couple this bike with a single mobility card (or telecommunications device) that can be used on bike-share, trains, subways, light rail, trams, buses, car sharing, on-street and off-street private bike and private car parking and there will be true 21st century “4th gen” bike-sharing.


Also at Velo-city Global 2012, Michael Jones, the CEO of Portland's Alta Planning, the sister company to Alta Bicycle Share, which is negotiating with Vancouver to implement bike-sharing next spring, said that they are looking into helmet vending machines for all 125 bike stations according to The Vancouver Courier.

  USA
                Long Beach, New York

           

Decorating the Long Island beach community just outside New York City, is the first Decobike system outside of Florida. With 15 stations and 200 bikes, the system launched on Wednesday, June 27, 2012. Like its Miami Beach sister, the system can be used as subscription based bike-sharing or for hourly rentals from the same stations. The pricing structure can be seen here. On the first Sunday of operation, the system had close to 2 usages for each one of the bikes. That is very respectable. There is a train every hour from Penn Station in New York City directly to a Decobike station in Long Beach, NY. Everyone in the New York City metropolitan area can get a taste of bike-sharing before the City serves up its main course.


               Kansas City, Missouri

To paraphrase Fats Domino* Bike-sharing is going to Kansas City, Kansas city here it comes. Tomorrow, July 3rd, early in the afternoon,  Kansas City B-cycle rolls across downtown KC with 90 bicycles to outfit 12 stations. Sponsored by a partnership with Bike WalkKC and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City this system brings more bike-sharing into the middle of North America. The system will offer daily, weekly, monthly and yearly subscription passes. The rates can be seen here. This brings the total of B-cycle systems to twelve for the beginning of July. We wonder if Kansas City B-cycle has plans on taking a page from Nice Ride Minnesota, Capital bixi, Capital Bikeshare or Hubway by jumping the river and going into Kansas City, Kansas!

EUROPE
  France
                  Paris
The 5th Anniversary Celebration of Vélib' (July 15, 2007) began the last weekend of June with a Grand Party "The 24hr de Vélib'" on the Champs-Élysees to raise money for various charities. Not even bad weather could dampen the spirits of Les Vélibeurs who rode the length of the Grand Avenue over and over again. The more they rode the more money was raised.  There is a good recounting of this event by Marion at Vélib' et Moi


In French and English


ASIA
  China
                  Hangzhou

To start July, Hangzhou Public Bicycle Service debuted an essential part on any great bike-sharing system, a mascot!

It's name is "'C' class or 'C' earners." The 'C' at the top of its head stands for the French word Cyclisme. This is a goal for all its riders. The face resembles the spokes of a wheel of a bike-share bike, but in the shape of the great West Lake of Hangzhou. The color of its clothes is that of the Hangzhou bikes!

The stuffed toy dolls and lapel pins will be for sale online at Hangzhou Public Bike Service soon! 

Images: The Dike Sharing Blog, Decobike Patch, BikeWalkKC Video: Marie de Paris "C class"

Lyrics Kansas City by Jerry Leiber and Jack Stoller


Russell Meddin      bikesharephiladelphia.org

DECOBIKE in Great Shape Its First Year

With Decobike, life is a beach

March 15th marked the first anniversary of DECOBIKE. Everyday each DECOBIKE is used on average 5 to 6 times by residents, tourists, and the Beautiful People who flock to Miami Beach, Florida. DECOBIKE is the first privately funded city-wide bike-sharing system in North America. It has completed its first year by logging close to 720,000 rides, with 100,000 in the last 30 days.

Starting with 550 bikes, there are now 800 bikes in the system. Soon there will 1,000 bikes rolling through the Miami Beach streets and next to the ocean. In its first year, 4% of the City's residents have subscribed to the long-term membership option. The program is celebrating its anniversary financially in the black.


Next week, DECOBIKE expands into the neighboring community of Surfside just north of Miami Beach. Even further north in May, a new DECOBIKE system with 400 bikes debuts in Long Beach, New York, just outside New York City.


As with all bike-sharing systems, DECOBIKE proves that all bike-share users are Beautiful People.


image: DecoBike


Russell Meddin    bikesharephiladelphia.org

The Bike-sharing World: First Week of August 2011

A lot has been going on in the Bike-sharing World over the past few weeks. Let's get started.

Good News in Europe:

Paris: Vélib' celebrated its 4e anniversaire last month by now averaging 75,000 daily trips on the ubiquitous grey bikes. After a period of flat growth, the first quarter of this year has seen the greatest increase of usage yet, and 20,000 new subscribers according to France3.

London: For Boris Bike's first birthday a few days ago, Mayor Boris Johnson confirmed that Barclays is extending its sponsorship of the system with another £25 million ($41 million USD) to expand the popular program into the western Boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham in 2013. This is in addition to the current eastern expansion for next summer's Olympics. Barclays Cycle Hire, with only one forth the number of bikes as Paris, realizes around 25,000 trips daily, around 1/3 of the 75,000 in Paris. That is definitely something to bank on!

Newcastle on Tyne, UK: A new mobile phone bike-share scheme, Scratchbike, has begun with 150 bikes tethered to 15 racks in the central Newcastle. The program is sponsored by NE1, the Newcastle Business Improvement Company. It is scheduled to be a city-wide service, which incidentally began as a student-run program at Newcastle University.

Dublin, Ireland: Dublinbikes two weeks ago reached an all time high of 6,280 rentals in one day! That's around 12 trips per bike per day! Dublinbikes is at the top of the list of the most successful bike-sharing systems in the world. This summer it has added 4 new stations and is adding another 100 bikes to bring its fleet up to 550.

Two new bike rental schemes make riding the Inter-City Rails easier:

Belgium- Blue-bike recently set up 35 locations with around 1,000 bikes at train stations in cities and towns throughout the northern part of Belgium. It's mostly a pick up and return to same location system. It is similar to the original concept of the Deutsche Bahn Call-a-Bike system at rail stations.  As Call-a-Bike has matured, it has become a multiple fixed locations bike-sharing system in many German cities. One may pick up a bike at one location and return it to another. The service is similar to The Netherlands' OV-fiets service.The Bike-sharing Blog hopes the same for Blue-bike as it matures. An online sign up for a membership card is needed to rent these bikes. The card costs €31 ($45 USD) and the daily rate of €3.50 ($5 USD). Also in Belgium, a bike-sharing system with 240 bikes is coming to the city of Namurs.

United Kingdom: Brompton Docks is a "left luggage lockers" folding bike rental system piloted this summer at a suburban London train station. These Brompton folding bikes must be replaced in the same set of lockers from which they were removed. Renting cost starts at £4 ($6.50 USD) for one day to £1.60 ($2.60 USD) for 23 days or more. As with the Belgium system, a membership and a smart card are needed.

And don't miss the OBIS handbook:

The Optimizing Bike Sharing in European Cities (OBIS) handbook has three years worth of data from studying bike-sharing in 10 European counties to identify the best practices, success factors, limits and market potentials, and the optimized strategies. This guide has published in it the authors' key findings and recommendations as a comprehensive manual in the form of a handbook. Read The Bike-sharing Blog's March posting about the OBIS Project and Final Conference.

Download a copy of this handbook here.

Bad News in Europe:

The ax falls on bike-sharing in Aix-en-Provence, France. After almost four years V'Hello said its last adieu in May to the citizens of this southern French city. With only 143 users, the municipal government felt it was financially better to cancel its contract for the 200-bike, 16-station service with JCDecaux rather than to keep it. According to LePoint, even with low usage, the outdoor advertising company wanted to charge Aix-en-Provence over €400 ($575 USD) more per bike per year than it charges Paris to maintain the system.

Good news in Eurasia:

Batumi, Georgia: This resort town on the Black Sea now has a 120-bike and 10-station bike-sharing program as BatumVelo began three weeks ago. The program uses the Smoove technology. Whether one subscribes or is a casual user, there is no free usage time. For every 15 minutes of use the subscriber pays 0.50GEL ($0.30 USD) or the casual user pays 0.75GEL ($0.45 USD) whether going to the beach or pedaling around town.

Good news in North America:

Long Beach, New York: The South Beach Miami DecoBike has landed a 400 bike and 40 station contract making a beach head in New York State. Long Beach, New York, which is just next to New York City on Long Island, is scheduled to have its fully operational bike-sharing program in September. Getting to the sands of the Atlantic Ocean from the Long Island Railroad Station will be a breeze on a DecoBike Long Beach.

While talking about New York, for the last two years at Summer Streets in New York City, there have been bike-sharing demonstrations as part of the activities. Will there be a bike-sharing contract announcement this year?

The Bike-sharing Blog expects Chattanooga, Tennessee also to begin a bike sharing program soon. According to Outdoor Chattanooga, there will be 30 bike stations located around the central business district, the UTC campus and the North Shore. The system will use the same style bike as the Washington, DC/Arlington, Boston, and Minneapolis programs.

Good News in Asia:

Hangzhou, China: According to the HHN Information Center, the Hangzhou Public Transport Company says that, as of now, there are usually around 200,000 daily usages of the system. Generally, each bike is used around 5 times a day.The the highest single day usage was 320,000 rides. There are currently 2,416 service points for 60,600 bicycles.

To keep up with the ever changing Bike-sharing World, keep referring to the The Bike-sharing World Map

images: Vélib', Barclays Cycle Hire, Blue-bike, Brompton Docks, V'Hello, Batum Velo by Jan Malinowski, DecoBike Long Beach

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

DecoBike a concession to the Art Deco of Miami Beach

Today in Miami Beach, Florida, an experiment in bike-sharing begins. DecoBike starts its operation in what is considered the crossroads of North and South America. A city of almost 90,000 people will have 1,000 DecoBikes in 100 DecoStations making it the service with the best ratio of bikes to population in the Americas. DecoBikes takes its name as a nod to the Art Deco buildings along the beach.

The service is not part of a street furniture contract, nor is it run by a non-profit that oversees operations for the city, nor it is a public-private scheme, nor is it a publicly owned and funded system. It will be one of the few services set up totally as a private venture as it is run as a concession within the city. In fact, as a private venture, the company already has all of the DecoBikes sponsored by KLM-Air France to publicize its upcoming new air service from Miami to the world bicycle capital, Amsterdam!

With a concentration of stations, the service is made to work for both residents of Miami Beach and the many tourists that seek its Art Deco hotels and warm beaches. The pricing for using the service differs from most other bike-sharing programs. For residents, the longest term for a membership is monthly at $15. There is no yearly membership. For both residents and tourists, there is a daily access pass for $14, a 3-day access pass for $30 and a special 5-day access pass for $49. All of these passes allow unlimited trips during the term with each trip 30 minutes or less at no charge. Each additional 30 minutes is billed at $4. The stations not only allow sign-ups for access passes, but also allow the borrowing of a DecoBike on an hourly basis. The hourly rate is thirty minutes for $4, sixty minutes for $5 and 120 minutes for $10, in each case, it is a single use. Most of these options are available at the easy-to-use stations.

Now with bike-sharing in sunny Florida, those bike-sharers whose services hibernate for the winter will have a place to enjoy the beach and the bikes.

images: DecoBike

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

The Bike-sharing World: March 2011

Europe:

StadtRad in Hamburg, Germany adds better functionality to its bike-sharing system making it easier to pick up and return a bike. In this bike-sharing era, there is much talk about smart mobile phones accessing new P2P (peer to peer) and social bike systems where no stations are necessary (i.e. "flexible" systems). In Germany where Call-a-Bike and nextbike have been mostly accessed by mobile phone, the newer systems such as StadtRad in Hamburg and Berlin have now added walk up kiosks as well. Beginning the first of this month in Hamburg, an RFID (radio frequency ID) membership card can be tapped on a bike's lock to release it. Tap the lock again with your RFID card when the bike is returned to lock the bike at any of the stations. Also, in Mainz, Germany, a system of 1,000 bikes in 120 stations, similar to StadtRad Hamburg, is currently under construction.

Nuremberg, Germany also starts a new RFID card system in two months. NorisBike will have 750 bikes throughout 65 stations. As attractive as smart phone based bike-sharing seems, the country that has used telephone bike-sharing for years is now moving to incorporate card-based kiosk stations to better serve its cities.

Europe-Australia:

Our friend Mike Rubo of the Sit-up cycles blog has made a new film with inciteful interviews from Barcelona's Bicing system. It explains how this system should be used as a model to improve bike-sharing in his native Australia.

In North America:

The Ides of March will grab lots of eyes as the sexiest bike-sharing system, DecoBikes, starts in Miami Beach Florida. Grab you bathing suit and take a ride on South Beach and enjoy the scenery!

Bike-sharing to return to Ottawa- Gatineau, Canada this May after a one year hiatus. The National Capital Commission (NCC) has approved a Capital bIXI system with 10 stations and 100 bikes for Canada's seat of government. NCC hopes to increase the size of the system to 500 bikes and 50 stations. Capital bIXI and Toronto bIXI will join Montréal bIXI in Canadian bike-sharing this year.

Crain Business News is reporting that Alta Bicycle Share and Trek B-cycle as finalist in the running for the New York City Bike-sharing contract for a system to begin late this fall or early next year.

images: Radio-Hamburg & DecoBike

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

Fast Deployment in the Bike-sharing World this Week!

This week saw extremely quick deployment and launch of bike-sharing services on two continents:

Asia:

In the burgeoning world of Chinese public bicycles, Guangzhou (Canton) which only last month was just talking to consultants, ITDP & Alta Bicycle Share, about starting bike-sharing, began its service today. Eighteen of 50 stations along Guangzhou's Bus Rapid Transit Line opened this morning. The service starting with 4,800 bikes will have 10,000 bikes by the end October. There is no charge for the initial hour and one yuan (15¢ US) for the next hour, as reported by Guangzhou News.

Europe:
This week stations of Valenbisi began to open up, The Bike-sharing Blog reported on April 15, 2010 that JCDecaux had just signed an agreement with Valencia, Spain for 275 stations and 2,750 bikes. In two months, the system was up and running. The yearly subscription is a reasonable €18 ($22 US) and the first 1/2 hour of usage is at no charge.

These two cities demonstrate how quickly, once a government embraces bike-sharing, services can be put into place.

Elsewhere in the bike-sharing world, Savona, Italy opens its branch of Bicincittà on Saturday.
It is a small system of 7 stations and 70 bikes for this city near Genoa. Here, the first hour of usage is at no charge.

North America:
B-cycle has gotten the approval from the San Antonio, Texas City Council to operate a system with its "Texas maintenance partner" -- Bike World. This will be done through the nonprofit Bike Share San Antonio; a bike-share, rental, and tour service with 14 stations and 140 bikes. The stations and bike will be similar to Denver B-cycle. According to the San Antonio Business Journal, watch for an opening at the beginning of next year.

Even more B-cycle news: Chicago will have a B-cycle demonstration system with six stations and 100 bikes this summer and into the fall, according to Chicago Now. For $35 for a month, $45 for two months, and $55 for three months residents, commuters and visitors in Chicagoland can taste real bike-sharing.

By far the most sexy bike-sharing is coming to Miami Beach this summer with DecoBike. You don't have to take our word for it, just watch the video below:

images: Guangzhou, Valenbisi, Savona

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org