The Trial of Trip-Based Fares

A goal of publicly owned bike-share systems is to provide safe, cheap, and widespread transit for its citizens and visitors. While annual memberships offer this for frequent customers, the 24-hour membership that many systems have does this poorly for infrequent and would-be customers. To improve upon this, the Washington, D.C. region’s Capital Bikeshare has embarked upon a new pilot fare – the $2 “Single Trip”.

Unlike the common duration-based bike-share fare types, lasting anywhere between 24 hours and 1 year, the trip-based fare type is more transit-oriented as it’s focused on the lowest common denominator – the trip itself – rather than a time period. The Single Trip fare’s $2 cost gives a customer up to 30 minutes of ride time with greater usage fees for longer trips. Capital Bikeshare’s Single Trip fare is one of the least expensive fare options of the “buffet model” of pricing in North America that was discussed here on The Bike-sharing Blog on September 14, 2014. The D.C. region joins Pittsburgh’s Healthy Ride with their similarly priced “Pay As You Go” fare.

Offering a trip-based fare in an established duration-based fare structure creates great risk. The risk is that revenues would drastically drop as customers who were formerly paying for a higher priced 24-hour membership, instead decide to purchase a trip-based pass at a quarter of the price. Less revenue would hurt a system’s cost recovery and make the system more reliant on other revenue sources, such as public subsidy or more advertising, if these options were available. To many public and non-profit systems, they are not.

The other possible outcome is that the trip-based fare would induce more trips by those for whom a 24-hour membership cost were too high, but who would pay the cheaper $2 fare which is comparable to the price of other modes of transit.

It’s unknown at this point which way the wheels will turn on trip-based versus duration-based revenues, however things are looking good. Over the past year new and established systems in North America have been inching towards lower-cost trip-based fares, such as with Montreal’s “One Way” pass for $2.95 CAD ($2.28 USD) and Philadelphia’s “Walk-up” and Minneapolis/St. Paul’s “Single Rides” passes – both for $4. There is also the “Pay As You Go“ fares of Social Bicycles that are charged by the minute -- another good solution.

Whatever name the pass goes by, the trip-based fare will hopefully increase bike-share trips, generate greater revenue, lower the financial barrier for people who need just one or two trips rather than 24 hours of trips, and make riding a bike a legitimate 2-wheeled transit option in a country where bike-riding for transport is not commonplace. Further, it could make bike-share resemble the more common fare structure of other modes of transit by removing the membership aspect and pricing it similarly to bus, streetcar, and rail.

At an historic time in the Washington, D.C. region where the country’s 2^nd most highly used subway system has begun a nearly year-long maintenance surge of single-tracking and station closures for weeks at a time starting today, Capital Bikeshare’s Single Trip fare will hopefully provide an economical and convenient transport option for the thousands of commuters who are looking for another mode in which they can rely upon for the next year and beyond. If Capital Bikeshare and other innovative bike-share systems are successful with the trip-based fare, it could be a new model for bike-share systems to emulate.

MetroBike, LLC is affiliated with Capital Bikeshare.

Arlington County Residents Can Pay With Cash for Membership & Usage Fees on Capital Bikeshare

A common complaint about bike-sharing is that one needs to have a credit or debit card in order to use the service, which is not the case with most public transit. However, unlike other modes of transit that accept cash, the customer is not given the key to the vehicle and ability to drive it away. With bike-share bikes costing upwards of $1,000, bike-share services typically require customers provide their credit or debit card upon registration so that the operator has recourse for the replacement cost of a bike in the rare event that a customer does not return their bike. The unintended consequence of this is that the unbanked – those who do not have a checking/savings account or credit/debit card – are unable to use the service. One can be unbanked due to a past history of poor credit or because they have chosen to not use these financial institutions in favor of check cashing establishments to better meet their needs. Regardless of why they are unbanked, the unbanked need access to bike-share as it’s one of the most economical modes of transport, as well as healthy for the rider and good for the environment.

Capital Bikeshare’s owner jurisdictions have encouraged the unbanked to get banked through our relationship with Bank on DC, which provides a checking account and debit card to individuals through local financial institutions. Customers also get $25 off of the annual membership price of $75. But more is needed to open Capital Bikeshare to the unbanked.

Arlington County has developed a solution for its residents to pay with cash for a bike-share membership and usage fees – likely the first of its kind in North America. Arlington will vouch for its residents, so that they don’t need to provide a credit or debit card. We will do this through our Commuter Stores, owned by Arlington County Commuter Services (ACCS) which has five Commuter Stores which sell transit fare passes; and provide transit, carpooling, vanpooling, biking, and walking information. Four of the Commuter Stores are "brick and mortar" shops and one is an RV (Commuter Store on wheels) with a weekly schedule. The Commuter Stores started providing walk-up Capital Bikeshare membership registrations in May 2014 where the membership fob is provided on-the-spot, so would-be customers need not wait the 5 – 7 days to receive their fob in the mail as with the standard online registration.

The Commuter Store’s accounting system allows cash to be accepted due to its transit pass sales business. Now Arlington residents can visit any Commuter Store location with a current government-issued photo ID with their Arlington address shown, such as a driver's license. Or they can show their passport, Permanent Resident Card (“green card”), or Employment Authorization Card (work permit), along with a copy of a utility bill dated within the past 60 days with their name and Arlington address. The Commuter Store representative will verify the individual’s identity and assist them in signing up for an annual membership with monthly installments ($84/year and paid as $7/month) or annual membership ($75 and paid at once).

An account can be opened with as little as $16 in cash towards the standard price of an annual membership with monthly installments. This covers the $7 per month membership fee for two months plus usage fees for trips beyond the first 30 minutes which are at no additional charge. Another option is paying $100 in cash for the annual membership cost of $75, and the remaining $25 will be used towards usage fees.

Credit reports will be sent weekly by the Commuter Stores, as will debit reports be sent weekly by the operator, Motivate (former Alta Bicycle Share), to Arlington’s Capital Bikeshare program manager. The credits and debits will require manual tabulation presently, but improvements in the bikeshare system’s back-end will allow this to be automated in the near future. When a customer's account goes below $2, the County will contact the individual to add more money to their account. At $0, their account will be closed until more money is added, with any month's missed membership fee paid for as well.

This solution should work well for Arlingtonians over the next year during this pilot. It’s a step in the right direction for Arlington and Capital Bikeshare and better addresses bike-share’s equity issues. More can and will be done to assist low-income Arlingtonians use the service by building on top of the Commuter Store’s bikeshare customer registration and now cash acceptance for payment. This solution is not a one-size-fits-all for other bike-share municipalities and operators, but hopefully this step will lead to more innovation in assisting the unbanked use bike-share services nationwide.

MetroBike serves as Arlington County's Capital Bikeshare program management consultant.

Article cross-posted on BikeArlington.com.

“Hot Zone” Commuters Taking Bikeshare to Use Metro

In Capital Bikeshare’s 2013 customer survey, the local government regional partnership that created the service asked who made trips to and from Metro. It turns out that 54 percent of our customers do.

So how far do Capital Bikeshare customers ride to get to and from Metro and their home? Well, we had some interesting findings which include a “hot zone” of bikeshare activity surrounding Metro stations.

Using Capital Bikeshare trip duration data for all stations during a week in July 2013, we determined the trip distances to and from Capital Bikeshare stations adjacent to Metrorail stations. Shown in the two similar charts below, Capital Bikeshare trips starting and ending at Metro stations have the most common trip distance of 0.5-0.75 miles. Not surprising as this distance makes for a good 10- to 15-minute walk.

      

Trips between 0.75-1.0 miles and 0.25-0.5 miles are not far behind as being the most common to and from Metro stations. Trips in the 0.25-1.0 mile range account for about 40 percent of the distances of the first-mile/last-mile trips and turn a 5- to 20-minute walking trip into an even quicker bike trip.

Longer distance trips become less common the further away the destination or origin become. Short trips of less than 0.25 miles are less frequent as they don’t save the customer time from walking. You’ll see that more trips in this range were made going to Metro, than from Metro, which leads me to believe that bikeshare is good for making up lost time in the morning when one leaves home late for work.

Some stations’ main purpose is to service a Metro station. The data visualization below created by Mobility Lab’s Michael Schade shows the residential bikeshare station at Lee Highway and North Adams Street sends a majority of its trips to the Courthouse Metro – as shown by a thick red arrow – whereas other stations are serviced by the origin station although far less frequently – as shown by the thin arrows. The two stations are about 0.6 miles apart. The second data visualization shows the Courthouse Metro sending a majority of its customers to both Lee and Adams and a nearby station at North Veitch and 20th Streets. Similar results will be found to and from other Metro stations.

 

Capital Bikeshare is a useful transit service for first-mile/last-mile trips to and from Metro, and this analysis shows that about 40 percent of bikeshare trips involving Metro are within that first and last mile.

Due to this important linkage, Arlington County will continue to place stations within this 0.25-1.0 mile hot zone around Metro stations, where land use contributes to a high residential and commercial population density. This is a no-brainer for bikeshare customers who are making these trips, but good to have some data to confirm it.

Here is a link to the presentation I gave on these findings at the recent Transportation Research Board conference in Washington D.C.

This article is cross-posted at Mobility Lab.