Update on DC SmartBike Program

The goal for launching Washington, D.C.'s bike-sharing program, "DC SmartBike" is in March 2008. This will likely be the first 3rd generation (high-tech) bike-sharing program in North America. The pilot will include 120 bikes, 10 stations, and is to be run by Clear Channel Adshel, the provider of Bicing.

The annual membership fee is likely to be $39 and the first 3 hours of each rental will be free. This fee seems reasonable, however, with 3-hr rentals, turnover and therefore ridership will be limited as individuals will likely keep the bikes longer.

The proposed station locations include: Foggy Bottom, Georgetown, Dupont Circle, U Street, Shaw, Mt. Vernon Square, Metro Center, Logan Circle, McPherson Square, and Gallery Place. The District Department of Transportation has produced a map of the proposed locations for more detail.

As the program is a pilot with fewer bikes and stations, there is a need to space the stations out more to cover a greater area and serve a larger population. However, I'm concerned that the stations will be spaced out too much. The service area is about 4 square miles (10.4 square kilometers) and in some cases the nearest station would be 1 mi (1.6 km) away. If I'm riding and my destination station is full, I'd be frustrated if I had to return the bike at the next closest station and figure out how to get back to my original planned destination. European programs aim to have stations every .2 mi (.3 km) and the DC program will have 5 times this.

I predict that DC SmartBike will be popular with Washingtonians, however, I'd like to see a few tweaks to make it even moreso.

image credit: Washington, D.C. District Department of Transportation

San Francisco - America's First Bike-sharing Town?

In the October 3rd San Francisco Chronicle, an article titled "S.F. moving to catch up with European bike-share programs" was about San Francisco's efforts to start bike-sharing. Clear Channel Adshel won the advertising rights on S.F.'s transit shelters and will be providing the bike-sharing service as part of this contract. I understand from the author of this report that a definitive number of neither bikes nor stations were not mentioned in the contract. Clear Channel won Washington, D.C.'s contract and will hopefully be starting a bike-sharing program with only 120 bikes at 10 stations, after two years of waiting... waiting.

Now that we're in a new era with programs in Europe that are measured in the thousands of bikes and hundreds of stations, it's absolutely necessary that American programs are measured in the same way. If a small program like D.C.'s fails (which I don't believe it will), it can't be said that bike-sharing in America doesn't work because America doesn't bike. This would be incorrect. A substantial program must be made to ensure that it succeeds. Velib' in Paris will carry as many passengers as the tram system by the end of the year when it has all 20,600 bikes up-and-running because an equal commitment was made to bike-sharing that was made to the tram.

Why shouldn't San Francisco have a bike-sharing program equal to Paris's? I don't see any reason why not? Paris had a bike mode share of 1.63% before Velib'; it's probably tripled or quadrupled since July. S.F.'s bike mode share was about 4% in 2003. This leads me to believe that bike-sharing would be even more well-used in S.F.

Paris has a population of about 2,200,000, or 107 people per bike-sharing bike. San Francisco has a population of 750,000, so why not have 7,000 bikes for the same ratio as Paris? This would make San Francisco's bike-sharing program the second largest in the world and deservedly so for the great city.