The Bike-sharing World - First Week of August 2014

THE WORLD:

The Bike-sharing World Map, bikesharingworld.com, has surpassed 5,000,000 page views since October 2007. It is the #1 resource for information on cities with bike-sharing systems world wide. It is a catalog of operating, planned and terminated bike-sharing programs on all the continents. With constant updates, the Map is the best way to keep up with the ever changing bike-sharing world.

The five millionth bike-share viewer studied the map on July 30, 2014

Follow the Map on Twittertwitter.com/BikesharingMap
See the O'Brien Global Bike Share Map. It shows real time bike usage in over 110 cities!

ASIA:
China:
                         Beijing:

Reports out of Beijing indicate that the municipal bike-sharing program, Public Bicycle In Beijing, is about to become the largest system of any Capital City throughout the world. Albeit, the largest Chinese program remains the one in the City of Hangzhou with over 78,000 bikes. Before the end of this year, when the area of Beijing within its Ring Roads reaches 24,000 bikes, it will surpass Paris as the Capital City with the largest bike-sharing program. As of today, if all the outlying districts that are under the control of the Beijing Program, though not contiguous to the capital, were counted, the current total would be 27,000 bikes and Beijing would now hold the title according to NETEase News.

NORTH AMERICA:

It has been a slow growth year for bike-sharing in North America. Leading up to 2014, it was shaping up to be a banner year of great growth with numerous cities expected to launch new systems either this Spring or Summer. Yet instead of the promised launches, there have been numerous delays. The cold Canadian troubles coupled with a cold and prolonged winter has been a part of it, but financing of programs has had the major role in this year's performance remaining in a low gear.
North American cities need to have State and Federal governments start thinking of bike-sharing as public transit and make available the funding streams that help other forms of public transit flourish.

images: Beijing

Russell Meddin            bikesharephiladelphia.org

The Bike-sharing World - Mid-June 2012

Asia:

    China:

                          Beijing

New Beijing station and bikes

Great Bike-share Logo

Once again bike-sharing returns to Beijing. On Saturday, June 16, Beijing Public Bicycle Service began in a section of the Chinese capital south and east of Tienanmen Square. With 2,000 bikes in 63 stations the service run by the Municipal Government of Beijing expects to expand to 50,000 bikes in 1,000 station by 2015. The service will offer the first hour of use at no extra charge, then a small overage charge thereafter. Watch the video below for more explanation. 

Beijing has had a few tumultuous forays into bike-sharing. In 2005, a private company, Beko Blueprint, started large-scale systems for the Capital. For the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it increased the size to 190 locations so the bike rental system could serve both visitors to the games and residents. Unfortunately the after a few years, there was not enough profit to cover the operating cost. Beko Company ceased operation of its bike system. In March 2010, Forever Bicycles brought a copy of it's successful bike-share program from the Minhang District of Shanghai to the Dongchen District of Beijing. After 20 months, according to The People's Daily, it pulled out when the Beijing Municipal government did not award it a larger contract.

Now with this new system run by the city, the goal is to bring Beijing in line with the mega systems of Hangzhou and Wuhan.

                        images in this video are of an old Beijing system stations and bikes. 

                        

                   Wuhan

According to the Jinghua News Service, Wuhan will be increasing the size of its bike-share system from 70,000 bikes by adding 20,000 new bikes and 200 new stations by the end of this year. 90,000 bikes - incredible!


Coming next week will be reports on developments in North America and from Velo-City Global 2012 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.


images: Beijing Logo
Russell Meddin       bikesharephiladelphia.org

Hangzhou & Beijing Updates

It's official, the China Low Carbon Science and Technology Museum will acquire the now retired bike #1 of the Hangzhou Public Bicycle Transport Development Service. The bike went into service on May 1, 2008 and was used nearly 7,000 times. It is one of the original 2,800 bikes removed from service at the end of last year and replaced with newer ones. The actual serial number on the bike is the six digit #800-001, the 8 meaning 2008. The new bikes now have seven digit numbers. 

Newly installed Beijing bike-share station

Station kiosk and card touch dock

As Hangzhou retires its first bike-share bikes, Beijing is about to deploy its first municipal bike-sharing service. Beijing bike sharing system stations are spotted being installed in the Dongcheng and Chaoyang Districts of Central Beijing. Unlike the terminated private company bike-share system of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, this service will be owned by the city. They plan to have 20,000 bicycles in 1,000 stations by the end of this year and 50,000 bicycles by 2015, according to the Beijing Radio Network. The launch date has not been set.

images: Hangzhou Service, Beijing TV


Russell Meddin    bikesharephiladelphia.org

Beijing Bike-sharing II

In an article from The Christian Science Monitor titled "Return to the bike? Hard sell in Beijing" by Peter Ford reports on The Beijing Bicycle Rental Company's efforts to get Beijingers (Beijingians?) back to their biking roots.

The article states: " 'We Chinese have a special feeling for bicycles, and cars have brought catastrophic damage to our society and our environment,' [the owner of Beijing Bicycle Rental Company] Wang says. 'Every civilized citizen has to be aware … that we have to bring bikes back into our daily lives.'

'His business is simple: customers pick up a bike at one of the company's rental stations – a straightforward model adapted to Beijing's sometimes bumpy streets – leave a 400 yuan ($53) credit-card deposit, and whiz away. When they are finished, they drop the bike off at another station and get their deposit back.'

'The service costs 5 yuan ($0.66) an hour, 20 yuan ($2.66) a day, or 100 yuan ($13.33) for a year-long VIP card. 'The longer you rent, the cheaper it gets,' Wang says, 'because we want to encourage people to use a green mode of transportation for longer. I see this as a public-service business.' " This is a different model from other bike-sharing services, but I like it!

Presently with 31 stations and 500 bikes, Mr. Wang hopes to have 200 stations and 50,000 bikes by the end of 2008.

photo credit: Sun Jun/ChinaFotoPress/ZUMA Press

Beijing's Bike-Sharing

An alert reader has pointed me to infor on Beijing's bike-sharing program. According to BikeRadar, "After the overwhelming success of Paris' bike rental scheme China is jumping on the bandwagon with a project five times the size of the one in the French capital. In the recent months the Beijing Government has been trialling a bike rental scheme at 31 hire stations around the capital. This week it announced its expansion, with 200 outlets planned in time for the 2008 Summer Games."

Additionally, this program has a different business plan. "As well as tackling pollution, the scheme is aimed at reducing bike theft in Beijing. Unlike in Europe, where advertising agencies have been given premium space in exchange for running rental schemes, Beijing's bike programme is being sponsored by the anti-theft arm of the municipal public security bureau and the Beijing Environment Protection Bureau. Police officer Wang Xiaobing told China Daily: 'This is like a centralized management of bicycles so that citizens won't have to worry about thefts.' "