International Bike-share Database

Hey bike-share system owners and operators, this post is for you!

It is said that something doesn’t matter unless it is counted. According to The Bike-sharing World Map, there are nearly 900 bike-share systems worldwide, yet how are the systems performing globally and how is your local system doing? How many trips are being made? How many people have used the service? How many kilometers or miles have the bikes been ridden?

Some bike-share systems make their anonymized ridership data publicly available either as large database files or through a more user-friendly “dashboard” as the Washington, D.C. Department of Transportation has done for Capital Bikeshare (image below). Many rail and bus transit systems have been doing this for much longer than bike-share systems. Now it's time for bike-share to step it up and do an even better job of reporting to show the contributions the industry is making and prove we are here for the long-term, rather than just being a decade-long fad. There is a grace period for infant systems, but as systems mature into adulthood, we need to be doing the same info sharing that other transit systems are providing. In fact, we should do better.

To document this data, the North American Bike-share Association and its members have created the International Bikeshare Database to collect and share important information about bike-share services in a user-friendly format for the benefit of its members and the general public. The Database has the goal of being the prime source for bike-share data for comparative purposes for those within the industry, for academic purposes to foster research in the nascent field, and anyone else who cares. Data about participating bike-share systems is provided with its latest fiscal year information, monthly trip and estimated distances, and a glossary of terms to assist the industry develop its vocabulary.

It's rare that a totally new form of transit comes into existence and since bike-share has done so, it needs to follow best practices in the greater transit industry and develop its own best practices within its subset of the transit industry. This is an opportunity to use some of the best practices that pre-existed bike-share and develop specific ones that apply only to us. Most of the folks I know who have come to this industry are coming with a bike background, rather than transit background. This is bringing in lots of new thinking into how to develop the industry. Having an industry-wide resource, such as The International Bike-share Database, is necessary. The Database is similar to the National Transit Database which is for U.S. transit systems, but does not include bike-share... yet.

The Database is starting off small, but hopefully will grow as the number of systems in North America grows and evolves.

Wheels4Wellness in the House

Dan Beard, Chief Administrative Officer of the
U.S. House of Representatives, with Representative
Earl Bluemenauer (Oregon) in background

This past week saw the National Bike Summit here in Washington, D.C. where advocates, transportation professionals, and others came together to discuss all things bike-related and share ideas. There, the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives made an announcement about their plans for an employee bike fleet. BikePortland.org
reports:

"Just hours after news outlets reported that oil prices have hit an all-time record high, at a rally for the National Bike Summit on Capitol Hill this morning, Congressman Earl Blumenauer and Dan Beard, Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives, announced a new [employee] bike-sharing program. Dubbed 'Wheels4Wellness,' the new program will initially place 30 bikes at three locations around the U.S. House offices on Capitol Hill and will be available for free to the House’s 7,000 DC-based employees."

"Beard says they hope to have the program in place by Earth Day (April 22) and that 'Plan B' would be to have it ready by National Bike Week (May 31st)."

While not of Velib' size, it's an important start for the nation which will lead to bigger and better things, such as the 435 elected representatives and their staffs taking the concept with them back to their home jurisdictions.

The audio of the House announcement can be found here.

photo credit: Office of Representative Blumenauer

Capital Bikeshare - a long road to success

With the launch of Capital Bikeshare today, it’s a day for those of us who worked so hard for so long to celebrate. So much blood, sweat, and tears were put into getting where we are today. Well, there wasn’t any blood, but the sweat and tears will more than make up for this. So many great people worked on putting together Capital Bikeshare and I’m happy MetroBike was able to make this happen for Arlington County and to work with so many great partners, including the District of Columbia Department of Transportation, graphic designers, sponsors, the public, and so many more. It’s also a day for Washingtonians to celebrate. Now a great new way to get around is available. It will help clean our air, lessen traffic congestion, and get folks fit.


It’s so wonderful to see a dream come true. I first learned about bike-sharing in 1995 as a student at the University of Virginia. I was working the graveyard shift as a computer consultant at a computer lab, surfing the Web to pass time until my shift ended at 11pm. It was there that I saw a webpage with two photos of Copenhagen’s Bycyklen, or “City Bikes”, on the screen. The website was very bare -- white background, a couple of paragraphs in English, and those two photos. That was all it took. I found myself studying abroad in Copenhagen the following semester learning more about their 2^nd generation coin-operated system. It was the first large deployment of bike-sharing anywhere in the world. Amsterdam had dabbled in bike-sharing twenty years earlier with a 1^st generation service where bikes were simply left on the street for the public’s use.

Arlington County Board chair, Jay Fisette, speaking at the launch

During my research I kept thinking to myself, “this idea is a win-win -- great for the environment, public health, and in getting folks on bikes. Why hadn’t bike-sharing taken off elsewhere around the world?” When I returned to the U.S., I advocated for bike-sharing, mainly through academic research for my Masters degree, writing some of the very first published articles on the topic. Eventually, just writing about bike-sharing was no longer enough for me. I needed to get my feet wet and begin being more proactive about it. “Be the change you wish to see,” was what Gandhi said, which I took to heart in 2004 when I founded MetroBike, LLC for the purpose of bringing bike-sharing to the U.S. Cycling in the U.S. is only about 1% of all trips in car-dominated America, but why not think big, right? I started The Bike-sharing Blog and The Bike-sharing World Map to continue to educate a wider auidence about the topic and began picking up clients from around the world who heard about bike-sharing and wanted to make it happen in their part of the world.

Paul DeMaio, MetroBike, LLC

When I started the Blog in May 2007, just before Velib’ launched in Paris, there were about 17 bike-sharing services worldwide. Now in 2010 there are about 200. Make that 201 today with Capital Bikeshare! While I’d like to say that The Bike-sharing Blog helped add those 183 new services, I think Paris may have played a slightly larger role with their mega service of over 20,000 bikes. Thank you Paris.

They say it takes a village to raise a child. The same could be said about starting a bike-sharing service. So many people positively shaped this weird idea of renting bikes for a short period of time to take this idea from Amsterdam to Copenhagen and now to Washington, D.C. and Arlington, VA. I guess dreams do come true.

What Would You Pay? The Per Minute and Buffet Models of Pricing

The last time you used transit, what was the cost of your trip? Did you pay for a single ride? Maybe you’re a frequent customer and your transit agency offers a week or month pass to save you money. So why is there a predominant pricing model for bike-share in many parts of the world that either charges mere cents per trip for the most frequent users and upwards of $7 USD for a day pass for a tourist or infrequent customer for the single trip they want to take? Isn't there something in between that's more reasonable for everyone?

A common pricing model throughout much of the world is a "buffet model" where an annual membership is available for $60 - $85 USD or a day membership for $5 - $10 USD, with unlimited trips under 30 or 45 minutes for both and usage fees starting only after you’ve reached this time limit. Once you've paid the membership fee, you can ride as much as you want within the included time period for no extra fee. So a daily commuter who paid $75 USD for an annual membership who uses the system twice a day for every workday (260 days per year) pays $0.14 USD per trip. This is ridiculously low and likely even lower than the cost of owning a bike. Obviously there's history about why this came to be.

First generation bike-sharing (White Bike) and 2nd generation (City Bike) systems were low-tech and had no charge to use them. When 3^rd generation (automated) bike-sharing came about, the first service was in Rennes, France in 1998, called Vélo à la Carte. The service was operated by Clear Channel Adshel – an outdoor advertising company. Vélo à la Carte had no membership or usage fees, but a €23 EUR ($30 USD) deposit. The first large 3^rd generation system was then Vélo’v in Lyon, France in 2005 and was launched by JCDecaux, a competitor of Clear Channel's. They started with a €5 EUR ($6.50 USD) annual membership, which increased to €15 EUR ($19 USD) and now have an annual membership fee of €25 EUR ($33 USD) with the first 30 minutes of each trip at no extra charge. Thus the "buffet" pricing model was born with all you can eat, or ride, under 30 minutes once you pay your membership fee. In response to a Bike-sharing Blog inquiry, a representative from JCDecaux said that this pricing model was created to incentivize very short trips by bike. It has done this quite successfully. Paris, which is also operated by JCDecaux, followed suit in 2007 with the same pricing model.

Germany took a different route with Call a Bike using a "per minute" pricing model. With this model, the more one uses the service, the more one pays for their usage. This per minute model is in direct contrast to the buffet model where the service gets cheaper the more you use it. Call a Bike started off as a private company in Germany around 1998 and was eventually purchased by Deutsche Bahn, the German national rail company. They have stuck with the per minute model to date, except for Hamburg, Berlin, and Stuttgart which have the buffet model. Deutsche Bahn obviously had a different perspective on recovering the costs of their bike-share systems, coming from a transit background.

Third generation bike-sharing was finally brought to the New World in 2008 with SmartBike D.C. in Washington, D.C., USA and operated by the same company that did Rennes' service -- Clear Channel. It cost $40 USD per year with free trips under 2 hours. Then in 2009, Bixi launched in Montreal, Canada, however, it was not funded by an outdoor advertising company, but rather by a city agency -- Stationnement de Montréal. They chose to use the buffet model, which was now the prominent model, but had to raise the price to pay for the capital and operating costs of the system. So goodbye to the €29 EUR ($37 USD) annual membership of Vélib' and hello to the doubled $75 CAD ($68 USD) annual membership.

With more and more systems now being owned by municipalities and non-profits, it seems like we could have a tragedy of the commons with the overuse of this public good because the pricing model encourages overuse in the buffet model systems. I'm not suggesting that the buffet model is bad. Rather, it is a model that works for specific goals, such as incentivizing short trips by making it dirt cheap for frequent customers. It works best for municipalities that want to encourage the number of trips, jump start a bike culture, and where paying for the system can be supported in large part by an outdoor advertising contract. For systems that don't rely on this funding source, in order to fully cover operating costs, the per minute model better captures the value of the system for customers by making the heavy users of a system pay for their greater wear and tear on the system. This should also lower the cost for infrequent customers, likely encouraging them to use the system more. (I'm not an economist, but I play one on TV.)

Since 2009, almost every new system in North America, and a good deal of those in Europe, point to the other popular systems before them that use the buffet model and feel that they must as well. How could Lyon, Paris, Barcelona, D.C., Boston, and New York all be wrong?

It's time to innovate with pricing models to both encourage more trips by more people, remove the financial barrier that high-priced memberships have created for lower income customers, and better assist bike-share systems pay for themselves. Bike-share is transit, so it also needs to be priced like transit. There should be a single trip price that is equivalent, or slightly lower, than the price of a single trip on the local transit system. It's time to innovate!

photo credit: My Dog, Dinner

Cemusa's Bike-sharing Program Video

Outdoor advertiser Cemusa has been a late comer on the bike-sharing front and accordingly the public generally is not familiar with it. However, with the recent partnership with Bicincitta' on the Rome bike-sharing program and now, with the development of its own bike-sharing technology, it appears Cemusa has gotten itself a foothold.

Cemusa has developed its own bike-sharing technology as is shown on a video on YouTube entitled "Cemusa Bicycle Sharing Program". The technology is station-based and requires a smartcard for access. The bicycles and stations look similar to JCDecaux and Clear Channel programs. An improvement is that one bollard can unlock two bikes. This should equate to a cost savings in manufacture and construction, as fewer bollards need to be built and installed than JCDecaux's 4th generation Cyclocity technology which is in-use in Paris.

Warning: The background music is catchy and may cause your foot to tap.