The Bike-sharing World the Last Week of December 2015

The World:

As 2015 comes to an end, it is time to think about recapping the numbers for this year's achievements in public use bicycle cities around the world.

This animation shows the growth of the public use programs in the world since 1993 through 2015 and beyond. As this year closes, there have been around 120 new cities so far that have started bike-share systems. China leads the way with around 60 new cities, while the USA saw around 20 new cities join this movement.

Blue: New City - Grey: Terminated - Yellow: Planned
Using the data from The Bike-sharing World Map, a comprehensive look at 2015 will available on this blog in early January 2016.

Currently, there are around 980 cities that have automated, 3rd generation, information technology bicycle programs that allow 'A' to 'B' pick-up and drop-off. The total number of public use bicycles in operation throughout these cities is around 1,258,500. New this year is the inclusion of  'Pedelecs', electrical assist pedal bicycles, which comprises around 9,300 bicycles of this total. This subset has been growing extensively in the last year and will only continue to do so into 2016.

Liangzhuzhen, Hangzhou, China new Smart GPS Bicycle

Asia:
China

Hangzhou,

After years of utilizing fairly low grade bicycles in public services, many Chinese cities are finally upgrading them. The Hangzhou GST Development Company, the research and development arm of the Hangzhou Public Bicycle Program, has created a GPS enabled "smart bike" as part of the IBSplus system to be first deployed in Laingzhu, a town near Hangzhou.

The same company is also creating a single access and payment card called "ibicycle", which can be used to access all of the 147 services throughout China that utilize their equipment, according to the Kim Tong News Agency. Additionally, The Hangzhou GST Development Company is developing a mobile phone application they have named "icycle", which can be used to access, pay, and map the bicycle usage.

The other major Chinese company, Changzhou Wing Eversafe Public Bicycle Systems, has already issued a single access card to 44 of the 150 cities that use its equipment including the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk on the Chinese border.

Jincheng,

Jincheng, China Pedelecs

This month Jincheng, Shanxi added 3,000  
Pedelecs to its current 5,000 pedal bicycle service, making it the first and largest deployment of pedelecs not only in China, but in the world. Jincheng joins Barcelona and Milan with mixed pedal and pedelec bicycles in their fleets. With only a few days in operation, it is not known if the new pedelecs are being used as much as in these two other cities.                                                                                                                  

North America:
USA:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
Birmingham,

ZYP Bikeshare

Directions on how to use ZYP

Speaking of mixed Pedelec and pedal services, ZYP Bikeshare has brought solar-powered electric assist bicycles to the deep South of the United States. Since its debut in October, around 2,800 members have ZYP'ed around town, making the service's name a verb to describe the experience. 


Around 25% of the current fleet of 300 bikes in 30 stations are pedelecs, which help the residents and visitors conquer the hills surrounding the Central Business District (CBD). This spring the service will grow to 100 pedelecs and 300 8-speed pedal bikes in 40 totally solar stations. All the bikes are 'smart GPS-enabled' and the illuminated kiosk can dispense a rechargeable card for those who are only occasional users. As with many services, the bikes can be accessed using a mobile phone application. 

ZYP'ing around the Birmingham's CBD is now "no sweat" with a little pedal assist!
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
images: IBSplus Bike, Jincheng Pedelec, ZYP Bikeshare

Russell Meddin          bikesharephiladelphia.org

Keep in touch with The Bike-sharing World with The Bike-sharing World Map. It is the premiere resource for information on cities with Public Use Bicycle programs and the complement to The Bike-sharing Blog. Use this easy web address for viewing the map:  

www.bikesharingmap.com.

Follow the Map on Twitter@BikesharingMap                                                 

The Bike-sharing World - First Week of June 2014

NORTH AMERICA:
USA:
       Washington, DC

sharedusemobilitycenter.org/summits/innovations-in-mobility-summit-2014/

It's not too late to register to take part in the conversations on how Public Policy and government regulations will affect bike-sharing for 2014. Help craft the direction of Public Policy for bike-sharing next week in the Capital City of the USA. See you in DC!

Bemidji, Minnesota:
Nice Ride Minnesota bike-sharing is going into the bike rental business in an upstate Minnesota summer resort town. Bemidji Nice Ride will begin renting bicycles out of four manned locations in the middle of June. There will not be self-service kiosks available as with the Nice Ride program in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota.

EUROPE:
DENMARK:
Copenhagen:

Bycyklen gobike Station - More Photos

After being one of the first cities to introduce 2nd generation bike-sharing in 1995, with Bycyklen, those odd looking, grocery trolley tethered bicycles, Copenhagen in now offering something close to 4th generation bike-sharing with an odd looking, computer tablet controlled, electric assist - pedelec- called the new Bycyklen for 2014. 
Although already on the streets during testing for a few months, the new program was only opened to public use this April. There has not been the fanfare of an official launch as of yet. Currently though, there are 250 gobikes in 10 stations. From the original plan, the program is scheduled to grow to around 1,250 gobikes in 65 stations.
The price for casual use is 25kr (US$4.50) per hour. With the monthly subscription of 70kr (US$12.75), plus an hourly usage of only 6kr (US$1.00). There are incentives and penalties for picking up or returning the gobikes away from the designated stations. The bikes are a bit heavy, but a cool ride.

ASIA:
CHINA:
Hangzhou:

Hangzhou, China -So many bikes outside the bike station

Reports out of China indicate the Hangzhou now has 78,000 bicycles in its bike-share fleet. According to HangzhouTravel.com, there has been a jump of 10% in daily usage of the program. Nearly 2,000 bicycles need maintenance daily. There are many cities throughout the world that would love to have a fleet of that size! Over 3,000 bikes each month need to be completely overhauled. New maintenance procedures has brought the fleet up to a level of 97% of bicycles with a rating of road worthiness.

Wuhan:

From the Haksong Evening News, is a report that the Xin Feida bike-share program in Wuhan has not been keeping up with its fleet and stations. The news agency reports that there are many stations void of bicycles and that the 300 million yuan (US$48,000,000) investment for the program hasn't fulfilled all of its promises. Hangzhou, China has a truer count on its bike share fleet and now is considered the largest program in the world.

THE WORLD:

Recent internet stories from a policy institute on the state of world bike-sharing in a "2014 Bicycle Share Fact Sheet"  have been lacking in accuracy.  

Since January there are over 700 cities in the world with active automated bike-share programs. Italy is overtaking Spain as the country with the most bike-share cities and China, now in third place, has overtaken Germany.

For a better survey of the bike-sharing world, The Bike-sharing World Map keeps in its legend a running total of the number of cities with automated bike-sharing.

images: The Bike-sharing Blog


Russell Meddin            bikesharephiladelphia.org

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 programs and the complement to The Bike-sharing Blog. The easy web address for viewing the map is www.bikesharingworld.com.

Follow the Map on Twitter@BikesharingMap

The Bike-sharing World: First Week of September 2013

NORTH AMERICA:
USA:
California Dreaming:
San Francisco, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Redwood City, and San Jose

Last week, Bay Area BikeShare debuted in five California communities: San Francisco, San Jose, Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Redwood City. Billed as a "pilot program", it has the possibility of changing the direction of bike-sharing in North America. Although, it is not the first North American regional bike-sharing program, Capital Bikeshare and The Hubway are regional, but it is the first single program that serves non-contiguous cities. It takes to the extreme, the concept of using personal mobility to solve the "first mile/kilometer" and "last mile/kilometer" problem of fixed route transit.* 

Caltrain Route

With Bay Area BikeShare, a user can pick up a shared bike and ride to a Caltrain Rail Station, dock the bike, ride the train to another select rail station, then take another shared bike to a final destination. This program could become the template for all subsequent programs where there is inter-city transit.

The Bay Area program allows true A to B transportation over a large region.This program takes the European rail station bike system concept like OV-fiets, Scotty Blue Bikes, Call a bike, Publibike, and the new British Bike & Go into being real bike-sharing and not bike rental. Unlike the European system, with the Bay Area program bikes can be returned to any bike station. There is no penalty when the bike is docked at another bike station rather than the one from where it was taken.

With success, we hope, Bay Area BikeShare will quickly expand to its original proposed starting size of 1,000 bikes in 100 stations. Then as it comes out of training, bring bike-sharing to the entire Bay Area.

San Francisco

Since we know everyone can't get enough information about bike-sharing, whether it's new, old, or the future, there is a place to get that shared information. The Shared Use Mobility Summit in San Francisco on October 10th and 11th will have demonstrations and panel discussion on bike-sharing. There will be speakers and experts on everything that is bike-sharing and possibly debuts of new bike-sharing systems. Oh yes, there will be segments on car-sharing too!

There is still time for discounted registration until September 16, 2013: Register Now

The web address for the Summit: sharedusesummit.org. If you or your city are planning a bike-sharing program, this Summit should not be missed!

EUROPE:

FRANCE:

Dunkirk:

A little over 73 years ago this summer, thousands of boats and ships streamed out of the French port of Dunkirk to cross the English Channel. As of September 2, 2013, in a bad analogy, English tourists to this port city will see that Dunkirk's bike-sharing ship has come in with the start of dk'vélo. Beginning with 100 bikes in 20 stations the program is planning to grow to 280 bikes in 34 stations. In keeping with the bike-sharing movement towards transit integration, dk'vélo's €10 annual pass ($13.00 US) is only €5 when a subscriber also has the dk'bus pass. The 24-hour pass to bike around Dunkirk is only €1, allowing each trip of 30 minutes or less at no extra charge. The next additional 30 minutes of continuous use is another €1 and then €2 each additional 30 minutes thereafter.

ASIA:

CHINA:

Hangzhou:

The newest replacement bikes for the Hangzhou Public Bicycle Service will have two different bike station locking devices according to Hangzhou.com.cn. Since 2008, Hangzhou has utilized a system for locking bikes similar to the French CycloCity "bornette" that requires a down tube side mounted locking device for anchoring the bicycles to the single post or column.

Because the Hangzhou system is now installing three sided glass wall multi-purpose covered bike stations, it is cheaper and easier to install a single rail along the back wall of the station, similar to the Clear Channel SmartBike system, for docking the bicycles. Each lock on the rail has a card reader and is interactive. The new bicycles will be able to use either system. The Hangzhou Public Bicycle Tech Center is marketing this new system to other Chinese cities.

AUSTRALIA:

AUSTRALIA:

 

A friend to the Bike-sharing Blog in Brisbane, Elliot Fishman, has recently published a study on the Barriers to Bike-sharing in Australia: The Barriers and facilitators to public bicycle scheme use: A quantitative approach. Generally these studies carry a substantial price for a copy, but for this month and next, Elliot Fishman's study is available at no charge: Download at the web site: Transportation Research Part F.

THE WORLD:

There are now nearly 4,000,000 page views for The Bike-sharing World Map. There is also a new easy web address for the map: www.bikesharingworld.com

The Bike-sharing World Map is the #1 resource for bike-sharing systems world wide. It shows new systems coming online which might not be covered in The Bike-sharing Blog. With constant updates, it is  the best way to keep up with the ever changing bike-sharing world.

Follow the Map on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/BikesharingMap

See the O'Brien Global Bike Share Map. It shows real time bike usage in over 100 Cities!

images: Bay Area BikeShare, dk'vélo, Hangzhou, CityCycle, and Melbourne, 

Russell Meddin              bikesharephiladelphia.org

* moving a transit user from his starting point to the transit line and from the transit line to the user's destination.

The Bike-sharing World - Last week of January 2013

ASIA:
China:
                  Hangzhou:

Multi-position station in Hangzhou, China

January 2013 brings a report that Hangzhou now has 69,750 bicycles in 2,965 stations with 94,000,000 people riding the system annually. Yes, that is ninety-four million rides a year. If the system's owner, the Hangzhou Public Bicycle Transportation Services Development Company Limited, gets one yuan ($0.16 USD) for each one of those rides, well, it is a lot of cash. Now, if those riders need cash, Hangzhou Public Bicycle will make it easy for them! The company just reached an agreement to lease space at their bike stations to the Guangdong Development Bank for Automatic Teller Machines (ATM). Five of the ATMs are already installed according to Hangzhou.com. 

China seems to be leading the world in ideas of integrating multiple uses for their bike-sharing stations. This is a great example of synergy of services for the system's users. There are electric bicycle charging hook-ups at some stations in the city of Wuhan. Many Chines cities now have bike-sharing stations that double as bus shelters. The more attractions there are for bike-sharing users, the more bike-sharing becomes attractive and used.


NORTH AMERICA:
USA:
                New Orleans:

SUPER BOWL XLVII  at the Superdome

Bike-sharing will be making a pass to the over 70,000 spectators going to the Super Bowl in New Orleans, Louisiana. From January 30 through February 3, Entergy, Bike Easy, and the Downtown Development District are bringing B-Cycle to New Orleans so residents and visitors can try out bike-sharing while enjoying the Big Easy festivities for Super Bowl XLVII. 

Both of the opposing football team's home cities, San Francisco and Baltimore are planning bike-sharing systems for 2013, so this will be good exposure for the sports fans. It also is a good way to excite the local residents to start a systems next to the mighty Mississippi. B-cycle will set up two stations and have bikes available at no charge. They hope that at least the first 49er users will start ravens about bike-sharing!

                       Anaheim:

Last week the Los Angeles basin got its first taste of multi-station bike-sharing. After a long waiting period, Bike Nation brought three stations into operation in Anaheim, California.

                        Miami:

Miami, Florida's City Council welcomed Decobike to travel across the Causeway from Miami Beach to set up stations in Downtown Miami. This system will probably be deployed fairly quickly.

                        Austin:
At the same time as Miami's City Council OK'd bike-sharing, so did Austin, Texas's City Council. They gave the non-profit organization, Bike Share of Austin the go ahead to deploy 400 bikes in 40 stations in this capital city of Texas.


Update:

EUROPE:
Hungary:

                      Budapest:

Since the residents of Budapest are starving to have Bike-sharing, Budapesti Közlekedési Központ (BKK) the consulting firm for the bike-sharing project, will sponsor another information session on January 30, 2013 for prospective vendors and operators . More information is at BKK.

images Hangzhou, Superdome.

The World:

The Bike-sharing World Map is the #1 resource for bike-sharing systems. It shows new systems coming online which might not be covered in The Bike-sharing Blog. With over 3 million page views and constant updates, it is known as the best way to keep up with the ever changing bike-sharing world.

Russell Meddin              bikesharephiladelphia.org

The Bike-sharing World - First Week of September 2012

NORTH AMERICA:
CANADA:

                                     Montreal

As summer comes to a close, the folks at bIXI Montréal have come up with a great new subscription membership plan for the occasional user. A bIXI key is issued with an online registration for $5 CDN ($5 US). Each day (24 hours) in which the key is used the subscriber is charged $5 and gets an initial ride time of 45 minutes with no extra charge for each use. This is a $2 savings over the regular day access rate which only gives a 30-minute initial ride time for each use during the 24 hours. The best part is that having the bIXI key eliminates using your credit card kiosk each time a bike is taken. 

Why has this taken so long to implement!!! When London first started, this was the only way a casual user could sign up for a day pass. This is a great plan for frequent visitors to the city who just can't utilize the value of monthly or yearly subscriptions. What about Toronto, Ottawa-Gatineau, London again, Minneapolis-St.Paul, Chattanooga, the Boston region, and the Washington, DC region? When do they get this plan?

USA:
                          Various Cities:   Crowd Sourcing Maps

Bike Nation - Downtown Los Angeles

Capital Bikeshare - Washington, DC region

Cincinnati Bike Share

Citi Bike - New York City

Bike Share Philly

Portland Bike Share

As new bike-sharing systems begin or older ones expand, the question of where to put bike-sharing stations needs to be answered. There are formulas that weigh proximity to transportation hubs, shopping areas, and residential density that are used for indicators. Following the in-place bicycling infrastructure as a guide is also used. Since the prospective users are the ones to be served, the best resource for bike-sharing station location is the users! The users know here they need stations at the start and the end of their journeys. Theses crowdsourcing maps are the answer to the question. They ask the users where stations should be placed. Developed originally for Capital Bikeshare in the Washington, D.C. region, their popularity for bike-sharing has grown quickly as shown above.

Quick updates:
Bike Nation will soon be fully operational in Anaheim. They recently won approval from the Long Beach, California, City Council to build a 2,500-bicycle/250-station service to go along with the installations planned in the Los Angeles basin areas of Downtown L.A., Venice, Hollywood, and Westwood.

Greenville, South Carolina has issued a bike-share RFP. The hot summer has made the Southeast USA a hot bed for bike-sharing.

ASIA:
CHINA:
                         Hangzhou

After an exhausting ride with just one minute to spare before those extra charges begin, it's great to know that you can dock your bike-share and get a refreshing drink or a quick snack. Well, the Hangzhou Public Bike Service thinks its users want that. They have commissioned 200 food and beverage kiosks to be installed next to some of the 2260 bike-share stations throughout Hangzhou according to a recent report.

Also out of Hangzhou there have been a few reports of bicycle failures due to rust. According to China Gxnews, a woman was thrown from a bike-share when the front fork collapsed. The report said the metal of the fork was so rusted that it was "paper thin". The oldest of the bikes have been in service for three years. Many are now being replaced.

THE WORLD

The Bike-sharing World Map is the #1 resource for bike-sharing systems. It shows new systems which come online which might not be covered in The Bike-sharing Blog. Keep up with the changing bike-sharing world by frequent visits to The Bike-sharing World Map.


images: bIXI, Food kiosk

Russell Meddin    bikesharephiladelphia.org

The Bike-sharing World -The First Week of July 2012

NORTH AMERICA

  Canada

           Vancouver, British Columbia

The Bike-sharing Blog attended last week’s Velo-city Global 2012 Conference. Bike-sharing was one of the pivotal themes of the week.

The Bike-share Bloggers, Paul deMaio and I made presentations on the topics of Municipal Best Practices and Maping the Explosion of Bike-sharing, the latter with the help of Oliver O’Brien of CASA and Andrea Beatty of B-cycle,  co-presented on the topics of Bike-sharing as an extention of public transit with representatives from Vancouver, Boston and Montréal and co-hosted roundtable discussions on Regional Bike-sharing Lessons with representatives from San Francisco and Boston.

There were presentations on bike-sharing from the four corners of the globe and the standard reference of everyone was our very own, The World Bike-sharing Map! 

Public Bike Systems Company supplied bicycles to all the hundreds of attendees to the Conference

One of more interesting exhibits at the conference, was a new bike-share bike out of Switzerland, Velobility. The bike centralizes all the electronics and the mechanics into a one “box” drive train, called the Ridebox.

The Ridebox has the capacity to be configured as strictly mechanical or as a pedelec with single or multiple speeds. It could have active GPS to track the bike and special remote locking to disable the bike. It could be configured to recognize a users’ RFID and set the bike to that user’s preferences. All of this is secure in the enclosed belt drive box. There is more information on the web sites Velobility and Innovations.  Every bike-share vendor at the conference was suitably impressed. Types of these bikes are now in use in several cities in Switzerland and Germany. 


To this bike-share blogger, this bicycle was really the first indication of 4th generation bike-sharing! Couple this bike with a single mobility card (or telecommunications device) that can be used on bike-share, trains, subways, light rail, trams, buses, car sharing, on-street and off-street private bike and private car parking and there will be true 21st century “4th gen” bike-sharing.


Also at Velo-city Global 2012, Michael Jones, the CEO of Portland's Alta Planning, the sister company to Alta Bicycle Share, which is negotiating with Vancouver to implement bike-sharing next spring, said that they are looking into helmet vending machines for all 125 bike stations according to The Vancouver Courier.

  USA
                Long Beach, New York

           

Decorating the Long Island beach community just outside New York City, is the first Decobike system outside of Florida. With 15 stations and 200 bikes, the system launched on Wednesday, June 27, 2012. Like its Miami Beach sister, the system can be used as subscription based bike-sharing or for hourly rentals from the same stations. The pricing structure can be seen here. On the first Sunday of operation, the system had close to 2 usages for each one of the bikes. That is very respectable. There is a train every hour from Penn Station in New York City directly to a Decobike station in Long Beach, NY. Everyone in the New York City metropolitan area can get a taste of bike-sharing before the City serves up its main course.


               Kansas City, Missouri

To paraphrase Fats Domino* Bike-sharing is going to Kansas City, Kansas city here it comes. Tomorrow, July 3rd, early in the afternoon,  Kansas City B-cycle rolls across downtown KC with 90 bicycles to outfit 12 stations. Sponsored by a partnership with Bike WalkKC and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City this system brings more bike-sharing into the middle of North America. The system will offer daily, weekly, monthly and yearly subscription passes. The rates can be seen here. This brings the total of B-cycle systems to twelve for the beginning of July. We wonder if Kansas City B-cycle has plans on taking a page from Nice Ride Minnesota, Capital bixi, Capital Bikeshare or Hubway by jumping the river and going into Kansas City, Kansas!

EUROPE
  France
                  Paris
The 5th Anniversary Celebration of Vélib' (July 15, 2007) began the last weekend of June with a Grand Party "The 24hr de Vélib'" on the Champs-Élysees to raise money for various charities. Not even bad weather could dampen the spirits of Les Vélibeurs who rode the length of the Grand Avenue over and over again. The more they rode the more money was raised.  There is a good recounting of this event by Marion at Vélib' et Moi


In French and English


ASIA
  China
                  Hangzhou

To start July, Hangzhou Public Bicycle Service debuted an essential part on any great bike-sharing system, a mascot!

It's name is "'C' class or 'C' earners." The 'C' at the top of its head stands for the French word Cyclisme. This is a goal for all its riders. The face resembles the spokes of a wheel of a bike-share bike, but in the shape of the great West Lake of Hangzhou. The color of its clothes is that of the Hangzhou bikes!

The stuffed toy dolls and lapel pins will be for sale online at Hangzhou Public Bike Service soon! 

Images: The Dike Sharing Blog, Decobike Patch, BikeWalkKC Video: Marie de Paris "C class"

Lyrics Kansas City by Jerry Leiber and Jack Stoller


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