The Bike-sharing World - Third Week of January 2014

EUROPE:
France:
                           Paris:  The new and the old with Vélib:

From:
GlassCamp at the WebSchoolFactory at the first European glass Hackathon.

How to use it?
When walking, ask glass: "Ok glass, find a bike station." Then, while on the bike, use the go to menu to find your destination. Set up the chronometer to signal the time to return the bike before 30 minutes to avoid the overage charge. Ten minutes before the end of 30 minutes, BikeFinder will direct you to the nearest station. With BikeFinder, there is no need to get out your mobile phone, nor stop the ride in transit. Will this be the way to find bike-sharing stations anywhere in the world, just with voice command and Google Glass?

The  most recent Vélib news letter Vélib et Moi is clarifing the reports of stolen and damaged Vélibs for 2013. The article states that during 2013, 8,000 bikes were stolen or damage of which 87% were recovered or fixed. That means over the course of the year 1,040 bikes were either lost or damaged beyond repair. It states that Vélib stations that have extraordinary high rates of damage or theft are temporarily closed until there is community engagement to stem the situation. Most press reports have only reported the losses and not the recoveries. Even some of the bikes that cast asunder into the river Seine are recovered. To begin 2014, the Vélib fleet on the street is once again up to 18,000 bicycles. 

THE WORLD:

Bicycle Sharing 101

If you are starting a new bike-sharing program:
A friend of The Bike-sharing Blog, Bradley Schroeder, has just publihed a new book: Bicycle Sharing 101: Getting The Wheels Turning. It is worth the read for both the novive and current operators of bike-sharing programs.

Keep in touch with The Bike-sharing World with The Bike-sharing World Map. It is the premiere resource for information on cities with bike-sharing. The easy web address for viewing the map is www.bikesharingworld.com.

Follow the Map on Twitter@BikesharingMap

See the O'Brien Global Bike Share Map which shows real time bike usage in many cities!

images: Vélib

Russell Meddin               bikesharephiladelphia.org

Google Introduces New Bike-sharing Service

The New York Times has reported today that Google has stepped into the bike-sharing arena as the provider of its 74,300-bike beta service in New York City. This program is more than two times larger than the nearest fleet size in the world. Following the naming lead of other popular programs such as Vélib’ and Velo’v in France, Google has named their program “Veloogle".

Veloogle stations are at every corner in chic neighborhoods, every third corner in up-and-coming neighborhoods, and other communities will maybe get a station sometime in the distant future.

All stations are uniquely powered with an infinite resource - waste cooking oil. Rather than solar power, which would be limited due to the city’s high skyline blocking solar rays to the street, nearby restaurants can pour their waste cooking oil into a compartment on a station’s kiosk and a chemical metabolizing agent breaks the oil down, creating energy, while also disposing of the waste oil in an environmentally friendly method. Google’s Chief of Green Operations, Alvin (Al) Goer, reports that enough energy is produced daily to power all of the 30,500 stations for the day as well as contribute 50 Megawatts of energy back to the local power grid. In other news, the local power company, con Edison, declared bankruptcy today.

To register for use of the program, one must have a Gmail account and provide their credit card number. The first 30 minutes are free and each additional 30-minute period is free too as are most of Google’s services. Already on the first day of use, there have been nearly 53,000 day, month, and year membership registrations and 431,000 trips have been made. Also, a biodegradeable helmet is dispensed for each and every trip which members may reuse or plant. An apple tree will grow from a planted helmet as a homage to the city’s nickname - The Big Apple.

With many technological advances that are pure Google, this system could be one of the very first of a 4th generation of bike-sharing programs. Veloogle’s innovations include: digital advertising on the bikes which are generated based on what the member is thinking; a global positioning system equipped on each bike that uses Google Maps to direct you to your destination via sidewalks or the sole bike lane; and a spam blocker that assists the bike dodge potholes, dog poop, and other debris.

At the launch ceremony, New York Mayor Bloomberg said, “There are two kinds of mayors: those who want bike-sharing and those who have it. I got it! So to all those who said it would never happen here, you can fuhgeddaboutit.”


April Fools! I wish portions of this were true, but it’s an April Fools joke. Hopefully, somebody at Google will read this and make the good stuff come true.

Paul DeMaio
MetroBike, LLC