Boston on Massachusetts Bay begins Bike-sharing today with The Hubway

This morning New Balance Hubway is up and running in Boston. This brings Boston into the select group of North American cities with major bike-sharing systems. Although New Balance Hubway is planned as a regional system, it starts with a Phase I of around 600 bikes in about 60 stations in the central parts of Boston. Already the adjacent municipalities of Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline are exploring having Hubway stations, according to the Boston Globe. There is a handy user-friendly Request A Station Locator Map where anyone can suggest a station location in the region. The expansion of the system is a shoe-in with the New Balance Company as its naming sponsor.

Even with only 600 bikes, New Balance Hubway has installed a few large docking stations in the expectation of a many members. Although the system will only run spring through fall, the yearly subscription of $85 is a bit more than its sister program Capital Bikeshare in Washington, D.C. and Arlington, Virginia. For $10 more, you get a few months less. Both services are operated by the same company, Alta Bicycle Share, however, pricing is set by the governments for Capital Bikeshare and likely the same is true with Hubway.

In a very interesting twist on usage fees, New Balance Hubway is charging around 25% more to its 1-day and 3-day "casual" users over what it charges its annual members who keep the bike over the first 29 minutes (below).

The Bike-sharing Blog welcomes Boston and its region to the bike-sharing world.

images: The Bike-sharing Blog and The Hubway

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

Golden’s Community Bike-share

The town of Golden, British Columbia has shown the world that small towns can join the bike-sharing world without multimillion-dollar investments. Two years ago, the Golden Active Transportation Committee met with the intention of setting up a bike-share “that would work well with our community,” said Lisa Reinders, manager of leisure services in Golden. This past March 27th, their dream was realized. The two hubs are located at a campground and a hostel, where the staff of these businesses sign up users, sell swipe card passes, and keep the stations clean. In return, the businesses retain 75% of the rental fees they sell, while the other 25% goes to the Town of Golden, the operator. The rental fees are $10/day, $35/month, and $60/season, which runs from May to October.

A new user can sign a waiver at the campground or hostel, and after paying, can obtain a swipe card to check out a bike for up to 30 minutes at a time. The hubs, which are powered by solar panels, were purchased by the Town of Golden from Sandvault, a bike-share vendor. The cost of the stations, including 15 Kona bicycles and software maintenance, came to $37,500, or $2,500/bike. To finance this investment, Golden benefited from British Columbia’s Resort Municipality Initiative, where 13 resort communities receive a portion of the town's hotel room tax to invest in local projects. As the staff of the campground and hostel do most of the operational labor, the town of Golden only needs to offer two part time employees to provide oversight, maintenance, and occasional technical support for the program. The town plans to add 15 more bicycles and two more stations in a subsequent phase of the program. Golden's model provides an intriguing example for smaller towns that want to offer bike-sharing without undertaking large capital investments.

Image credit: Town of Golden

The Bicycle Dividend

As New York City began rolling out extensive bike lanes this spring, John Cassidy of The New Yorker raised staunch opposition, suggesting that the point has been reached where the additional costs of bike lanes to motorists and pedestrians are greater than the benefits they provide to cyclists. The Economist promptly published an article addressing the economic fallacies of Cassidy’s crusade, delineating the dramatic externalities of urban auto use, including respiratory damage from auto-generated ozone, climate changing carbon dioxide, road breakdown, and congestion, not to mention accident fatalities and obesity. As fuel taxes are too low to cover road maintenance, let alone the rest of these externalities, none of which bicycles exhibit, New York would be better off encouraging fewer cars and more bicycles, The Economist argues.

Nancy Folbre, of UMASS Amherst, takes her economic analysis a step further, positing a concept of “The Bicycle Dividend.” She turns the traditional economic concept of demand stimulating supply on its head, showing that increased supply of bike lanes encourages more cyclists, which makes cycling safer, which in turn attracts more cyclists, which begins to shift cultural perspectives on cycling, which in turn attracts more cyclists, which encourages businesses to offer showers and other resources for their bike- commuting employees, which in turn attracts more cyclists, etc. This virtuous cycle, while taking time to evolve, can be spurred by increased supply of bike infrastructure. Finally, she quotes a study by her colleague showing that each dollar spent on bike paths creates more jobs than each dollar spent on roads, in addition to providing more public welfare.

Discouragingly, Armin Rosen of Alt Transport published a reaction to Folbre’s article arguing that drivers won’t necessarily stop driving because bike lanes have increased. Rosen concludes, “There is a ’biking dividend’—but it might have more to do with a city’s prestige and reputation, as well as its local biking economy, than with any unproven ability to take cars off the road.” This reveals Rosen’s greatest blunder, as he fails to recognize the connectedness of a city’s reputation, biking economy, and car concentration. As Folbre’s virtuous cycle illustrates, the three build off each other, so if a city would benefit from fewer cars, as The Economist suggests New York would, then it would do well to invest in bike infrastructure. This, in turn, will increase bike commuters, resources for bike commuters, and begin to change pervasive cultural attitudes towards bikes. Further, a NICHES report showed 7% of people who use Lyon’s Velo’v bike-share would have driven a car if the program did not exist, showing that enhanced infrastructure does take cars off the road.

This issue lies at the crux of city planning, and Cassidy’s accusation of “the bike lobby’s effort to poach on our territory” lays bare his belief that the streets, the majority of most cities’ public space, belongs to drivers, and any reconfiguration of this historical precedent is an affront to their rights. Fortunately, we are now afforded the hindsight to see that basing our transportation system on cars is hurting our bodies and our environment, in more ways than one. After all, here we aren’t just talking about public transportation, but what kind of transportation we, as a public, wish to incentivize. It’s time for our leaders to make public space work for our best interests as a public, not just for the best interests of drivers. The dramatic proliferation of bike-sharing services across the world, and the necessary bike infrastructure to serve bike transit riders, reveals a change of course. The expansion of public space afforded to cyclists will only facilitate the social and infrastructural change necessary needed to make cycling a viable urban transportation option, and make our cities better places to live.

Image credit: New York Department of Transportation

Japanese Bike-share is Electric

Kitakyushu City, in the Fukuoka Prefecture of Japan has launched “City Bike”, an electric bike-sharing program. In order to earn its title of environmental capital, the city contracted the non-profit Town Mobile Network Kitakyushu to operate the bike-share service. Since March 27, 2010, 116 bikes have been available at 10 stations throughout the city’s downtown area. July 2010 saw an average of 41 people ride a city bike each day.

Users sign up for the program online or at one of three manned stations where they receive a membership card. With their card, a customer can release a key and battery from one of the many electronic stations throughout the city. The customer may can then unlock the bike with the key and insert the battery into the bike, at which point they are ready to ride. The bikes cost 105 Yen (US $1.27) per hour, with additional fees for keeping a bike for over 5 hours.

Source: Japan for Sustainability

image credit: Kitakyushu City

Arlington's Interactive Mapping Tool for Capital Bikeshare

Arlington County, Virginia, USA has a public process where it provides many opportunities for Arlingtonians to contribute to ensure the best possible results are created in providing public services for its citizens. Time-consuming, but thorough, "the Arlington Way", as the County calls it, is being used for the selection of the County's next round of 30 stations, growing its share of the regional Capital Bikeshare service to nearly 50 stations. MetroBike, LLC is the program manager for Arlington's fleet, so I wanted to share what we're doing to generate public comment, so that the new stations will best service folks who live, work, or play in Arlington.

The public process includes a public meeting, to be held tomorrow (6/27) for the general public to comment on locations in the dense urban corridor where the stations are planned for this fiscal year. Next month we will present again the locations to civic associations for those neighborhoods which will receive a Capital Bikeshare station. We'll also notify businesses and residents who are near proposed station locations through a letter.

An innovative public outreach tool that I'm excited about is an interactive map, developed by BikeArlington, which will allow the public to comment on our proposed locations and suggest locations of their own. On the interactive map, County-proposed locations are shown in yellow, community-proposed locations are in green, and existing stations are shown with the Capital Bikeshare logo. The public may like or dislike any location and comment with their reason. All comments for any respective proposed location are shared with the viewer by clicking on a proposed station. With over 150 comments since the webpage was launched last week, the interactive map is proving popular.

Through all this public feedback, we'll be sure to install our stations where people will use them most.

The Bike-sharing World: First Days of Summer 2011

Asia:

Korea - The first day of November 2010, Seoul, Korea officially began an experiment in bike-sharing with a one year pilot program called SeoulBike. Serving just two small areas of this huge metropolis, this month the system with only 440 bikes in 43 stations surpassed 110,000 trips according to Seoul's City Government. Even in such limited areas, each bike is used 1.7 times a day. It would be more, but the initial "no charge" usage period is 4 hours! Each additional 1/2 hour after that is 1,000₩ ($1 USD). The subscription rates are: 7 days for 3,000₩ ($3 USD), 30 days for 5,000₩ ($5 USD), 6 months for 15,000₩ ($15 USD) and at the beginning of the pilot, the 1-year subscription was 30,000₩ (about $30 USD). We'll come back and take a look at this system as it moves on from its pilot status and grows throughout other areas of Seoul.

China - It's getting interesting with China's two mega systems. It was announced by the Hubie Daily News that Wuhan, China's system now has 51,500 bikes, which is about same number as Hangzhou, China's system. Wuhan plans to expand its system to 70,000 bicycles by the end of this year. Hangzhou currently with about 53,000 bikes and expects to have 61,500 bikes by the end of this year. By 2015, Hangzhou projects to have 100,000 bikes according to China's TLNews. In this bicycle race, which of these cities will claim the "Maillot Jaune" (or yellow jersey, to borrow Tour de France parlance) of the largest system in the world at the end of the year? Speaking of the Tour de France, the entire country of France has less than 42,000 bikes in all of its public bike-sharing programs! China is again the Kingdom of Bicycles.

Europe:

France - Last week the 100,000,000th trip was taken on a Vélib' in Paris. As proof that bike-sharing is such a global phenomenon, the event was celebrated by the Japanese television show "Yatta" which means "You did it!"

Australia:

Australia - Brisbane started CityCyle at the beginning of October 2010. There are around 100 stations and around 1,000 bicycles. Washington, DC started Capital Bikeshare at the end of September 2010 with also around 100 stations and 1,000 bikes. Both cities have low lying central business districts and hilly residential areas. Both cities get hot in the summer. The City of Brisbane has three times the population of the city of Washington, but as a region, only one-third the population of the DC-area. A more striking difference is the respective bike-sharing usage numbers. Over about the same period of time Washington has had over 550,000 bike usages and Brisbane has had around 50,000. There are 5,200 subscribers to CityCycle and 15,200 to Capital Bikeshare. Both cities are planning large expansions of stations and bikes for their respective systems during 2011.

We at The Bike-sharing Blog have to ask: What is going on "down under" that has put the Washington system so much on top?

images: Hi Seoul, Brisbane Times, The Bike-sharing Blog, video: Vélib'

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

The Bike-sharing World: First Week of June 2011

Transportation Integration in Europe:

Starting today, Deutsche Bahn, the German railway company, is offering the Mobilitätskarte (Mobility Card) in Berlin. This could be the start of the future for bike-sharing membership cards. This card not only offers access to the new Call-a-Bike StadtRAD system, it also is an all-zone VBB, or Berlin Brandenberg Public Transit, pass which provides access to train, tram, subway, and bus, in addition to access to a new all electric car-sharing program. All that is missing from this card is parking meter payment!

The card costs €78 ($112 US) a month which includes a €50 ($78 US) credit for use of the car-share program. Since it is a trial, the card is only available for sale this month, but can be renewed for three months. The Bike-sharing Blog will be watching the acceptance of this card by bike-share users in Berlin. This type of all encompassing bike-share transit card will be a hallmark of 4th generation bike-sharing.

Known for its many flavors of craft beer, Belgium now will be known for its flavors of bike-sharing with the launch of A-Velo in Antwerp on Thursday June 9th. This will be another Clear Channel European system. With 85 stations and 1,000 bikes to start, the system will grow to 150 stations and 1,800 bikes in two years. The yearly memberships, which are available now, cost €35 ($50 US). There is a weekly pass at €7 ($10 US) and a daily at €3 ($4 US). As is customary, there is no charge for the first 30 minutes and each additional 30 minutes escalates in price. An interesting twist for membership is that if users keep a bike for 4 or more hours on three different occasions he or she will loose the bike-sharing privilege!

In Asia:

Kudos to Elizabeth Press of StreetFilms. She made a great video on the huge bike-share program in Hangzhou, China.

Since she filmed this in depth study on the largest bike-sharing system in the world, the Hangzhou Public Transport Group has been adding more bikes to reach 60,600 bikes at 2,711 service points for this year.

images: DB, A-Velo, video: Streetfilms

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

Bike-sharing Designed to Fit More than the Average José

Gandia, Spain is the one of the first cities to adapt its bike-sharing service, labici, for persons with disabilities. With 500 bikes at 40 stations, the municipality decided to introduce bicycles for those with disabilities as a trial program. According to laprovincias, the Councillor for Traffic and Mobility for the City of Gandia, Vicent Mascarell, is proud of his city's "commitment to equality" to persons with disabilities." A successful experiment here could lead to more bike-sharing services following Gandia's lead.

In the bike-sharing world as May winds down, Hawaii B-cycle (Kailua, USA), Boulder B-cycle (Boulder, USA) and StadtRad Berlin (Berlin, Germany) started today. Capital bIXI (Ottawa, Canada) started on Wednesday and Madison B-cycle (Madison, USA) starts on Sunday. At this rate of new service launches, The Bike-sharing World Map will soon be rolling with more bike icons than blank space!

Happy Bike to Work Day for readers in the United States!

[Check out Russell Meddin's guest article this month at Renault's Sustainable Mobility website. - Paul]

image: laprovincias.es

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

Happy fourth birthday to The Bike-sharing Blog!

Where has all the time gone? The Bike-sharing Blog was born four years and 275 posts ago today. That’s sharing about 69 posts per year. Russell and I combined don’t even brush our teeth that often in a year.

As we enjoy the sugary icing of the Blog’s birthday cake, we thank you for your continued reading of our little Blog. And here’s to everyone who is making bike-sharing happen in their city or town, campus, park, or office park! We look forward to all the exciting developments on which we will be writing about in The Bike-sharing Blog’s fifth year.

Sincerely,

Paul DeMaio and Russell Meddin, The Bike-sharing Blog co-authors

p.s. – Paul is the good-looking guy with curly hair on the left and Russell is debonair guy on the right. And no, we’re not wearing spandex.

Now That's Data

Capital Bikeshare (Washington, DC & Arlington, VA - USA) launched its dashboard, or snapshot of key service performance measures, today. The dashboard is full of useful data from the service and I believe one of the best sites of its kind provided by any government offering a bike-sharing service. Data on a public service should be easily accessible and informative and this site certainly is.

For Immediate Release
Monday, May 16, 2011

Capital Bikeshare Launches New Performance Dashboard

(Washington, D.C.) Capital Bikeshare launched a new website today that provides a wealth of performance data about the bikesharing program, including monthly statistics for ridership, membership, customer service, fleet performance and safety.

The Capital Bikeshare dashboard is available at cabidashboard.ddot.dc.gov. It was developed by the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) as part of the agency’s continuing effort to improve transparency and release performance data related to its transit services.

“This new dashboard unleashes the data that we have accumulated with each electronically-recorded Bikeshare trip,” said DDOT Interim Director Terry Bellamy. “We encourage our members, casual users and anyone interested in the system to review, analyze and download the information and provide us with your feedback.”

The dashboard features 18 individual performance metrics, which fall under four categories: Ridership, Fleet Performance and Safety, Customer Service and Membership. Performance metrics include: Trip Origin/Destination by Station; Trip Origin/Destination by Municipality; Fleet Maintenance (Number of bikes inspected/repaired) per month; Rebalancing (Number of times bicycles picked up and dropped off at stations); and total number of users. The data covers the entire Capital Bikeshare system, including the District and Arlington.

Through this portal, the public will be able to review system-wide information, compare performance metrics by different time intervals, and download data for individual custom analysis.

In order to guide users through the site, DDOT has prepared an online Dashboard Tutorial, which is available on DDOT’s YouTube Channel, providing a voice-narrated, step-by-step overview of how to use the Dashboard and maximize its features.

Preceded by the Circulator Dashboard, the first dashboard of its kind in the Washington Metropolitan region, the Capital Bikeshare dashboard’s creation is a reflection of DDOT’s continued commitment to transparency, government accountability and best practices. The information and data contained in the dashboard is scheduled to be updated on a monthly basis.

For any inquiries about the dashboard, users are asked to contact DDOT via email at cabidashboard@dc.gov.

Capital Bikeshare is the product of a unique public/private partnership between DDOT, Arlington County and Alta Bike Share. The two jurisdictions worked closely with Alta Bicycle Share to develop the program in the fall of 2010, offering regional service with 1,100 bikes and 114 stations. Based on the initial success of the program, both jurisdictions plan to add additional stations and bicycles to the system by the end of the year.

Ljubljana gets on its BICIKEL(LJ)

BICIKE(LJ), Slovenia's new bike-sharing service, launched May 12th in the capital of Ljubljana. Its name is a combination of a word "bicikel" (which I'll let you guess what it means in English) and "LJ", which is the registration motor vehicle mark and initial letters of Ljubljana. Customers will be able to pick up one of 300 bicycles from any of the 31 stations covering an area of approximately 12 square kilometers in a network where the terminals are not separated by more than 500 meters. The population of Ljubljana is 275,000 with at least 100.000 daily commuters and 45,000 students.

The service is a joint venture of the Municipality of Ljubljana and the advertising company Europlakat (a partner of JCDecaux in Slovenia). Even before the launch, 1,633 advance registrations had been made through their website -- http://en.bicikelj.si/. Registration is available for a year at three euros and a week at 1 euro. The first hour is free of charge, the second is 1 euro, third is 2 euros, and each additional hour is 4 euros. The service is operable 24 hours per day throughout the year.

Special thanks to Janez Bertoncelj, Ljubljana's cycling coordinator for assistance with this article.

The Bike-sharing World: First Week of May 2011

Because the Northern Hemisphere is basking in warm weather, bike-sharing systems are blooming all over that part of the world.

The beginning of May has brought the official opening of Tel-Ofun in Tel Aviv, Israel. Watch video.

Yesterday morning bIXI hit the streets of Toronto, Canada. With 1,000 bikes in 80 stations, Toronto bIXI will be the 3rd largest system in North America! Bike-sharing is making big strides in Canada. Watch this news report

Later this week Nuremberg's NorisBike starts on May 6th. This is another system using neXt bike technology. Bike-sharing is expanding and evolving in Germany. Many programs are now establishing specific location docking stations and adding subscriber card and credit card access as well as telephone access to the bikes. Berlin's new Deutsche Bahn StadtRAD begins May 20th.

May 20th is also the official start date for Hawaii B-cycle although the two stations are now in use. Boulder B-cycle also starts on May 20th opening with 12 stations and expanding to 15 with 150 bikes by the end of summer.

Keep your eyes open, because there are more buds of bike-sharing systems ready to show their pedals and blossom into full service.

images: the marker café, Martin Reis bIXI, Hagen Gerulis Nüremberger Zeitung, DB StadtRAD, HawaiiNewsNow, 303cycling

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

Vancouver Readies for 2012

The City of Vancouver, Canada has a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEOI) out for a company "to develop, install, own, operate and finance a Public Bicycle System (“PBS”)... targeting launch in Spring 2012 or earlier." (It's interesting that there happens to be a company named Public Bicycle System Company that is also in Canada. Merely a coincidence tho'.)

It's interesting to see cities are getting smarter and turning the outdoor advertising business model of bike-sharing on its head. Instead of cities doing a public tender for an outdoor advertising program and getting a "free" bike-sharing service, the trend is to now to do a public tender for bike-sharing through a bike-sharing service contract and getting it for free. It keeps things simpler and the revenues cleaner.

Pedal hard, Vancouver! The service should be up and running in time for your hosting of the Velo-city Global conference in Spring 2012.

image: Destination360

Royal Bike-sharing

We all know that one feels like royalty while bike-sharing. Now the Royals will also know that feeling too. London Mayor Boris Johnson gave a special tandem "Boris Bike" to Prince William and Kate Middleton as a royal wedding gift. We understand that, not standing on ceremony, the Royal Couple will pay £2 a day rather than the normal £1 a day for casual use!

The special built 7-speed tandem was made by Cycle DeVinci, the company which makes the bicycles for Public Bike System Company, the suppler to London's Barclays Cycle Hire. It was commissioned by SERCO -- the system's operating company. Mayor "Boris" presented the bike as a wedding gift from the people of London during an open air ceremony at Trafalgar Square this morning as many "Boris Bikers" watched the royal procession on a giant video screen.

images: BBC, PBSC video: Mayors Office London

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

Hubway Coming to Boston Area

This afternoon Boston signed the deal to bring bike-sharing to the Massachusetts Bay Area. With the goal of making a regional system, Boston will start Hubway, the name of its bike-sharing service in July with 600 bikes in 61 stations. The neighboring Cambridge, Brookline and Somerville communities are expected to join Hubway within the year and other communities to follow soon thereafter to ultimately have 5,000 bikes throughout the region with 300 stations. The system will use the Public Bike System Co. equipment, the same as in Washington, DC; Minneapolis; London; Melbourne; and Montréal. It will be operated by Alta Bicycle Share of Philadelphia which also operates the Washington, DC and Melbourne, Australia programs. The yearly subscription membership is pegged fairly high, at $85 which is $25 more a year than the comparable Nice Ride Minnesota and $10 more than Capital Bikeshare. The daily fare for casual users is the same as Minneapolis and Washington at $5.

The Boston-area athletic shoe company, New Balance, will be a major sponsor and has retained the naming rights to the system, according to a City of Boston press release. New Balance Hubway should be an interesting name for bike-sharing service considering bike balancing is a major element of every service.

image: The Bike-sharing Blog

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org