The Bike-sharing World Mid-November 2012

NORTH AMERICA:
USA

San Diego, California:

Decobike at Petco Ball Park San Diego

San Diego is to be decorated with bike-sharing from Decobike.

Today the City of San Diego announced in a press release that it has picked Decobike, the master of ocean side bike-sharing, to provide the city with a new program. Covering the area stretching from La Jolla to Downtown San Diego along the coast, there will be 1,800 bikes in 180 stations to start. Projected schedule to launch the system is Fall 2013. It is to be a comprehensive system with about 4 stations on average per 2.5 km² (one square mile) and a bicycle to resident ratio of about 1 to 155 in the areas served.. This will position San Diego to become one of North America's most utilized bike sharing programs. With Decobike picked for San Diego, Southern California is no longer being considered a reservation of Bike Nation.

Fullerton, California:

Speaking of Bike Nation, more of the Los Angeles basin will be covered by Bike Nation. This week Fullerton, California picked Bike Nation to develop it's bike-sharing pilot program of 165 bikes in 15 stations. It hopes to expand this program to 515 bikes in 50 stations in two phases. No start date was stated in the announcement. Bike Nation now has programs planned for Anaheim, Fullerton, Los Angeles, Venice and Westwood California.

Long Beach, New York:

Green Decobike Station on shattered boardwalk

Speaking of DecoBike, when Hurricane Sandy hit Long Beach, NY, it tore up the ocean side boardwalk, but left this green Decobike Station standing. Before the hard hurricane winds, Decobike removed the bikes and put them into safe storage. All the stations have survived, but it will be a little time before the boardwalk is replaced and the Decobikes will begin rolling again.

New York City, New York:

Citi Bike Storage Building 293

Speaking of Hurricane Sandy, reports in the New York Times and New York Post indicate that the first floor storage area of the Brooklyn Navy Yard building where the hundreds of bikes and stations for New York's Citi Bike program are housed, took in between 1.5 and 2 meters (4 to 6 feet) of water with the Hurricane's ocean surge. A NYCDOT spokesperson indicated that there was damage to the equipment, but it was too early to determine the extent of the problem.
We all hope that there will be no further delay in deployment of Citi Bikes.

Update: According to the Montreal Gazette, a spokesperson for the equipment supplier to the Citi Bike program said that hundreds of bikes and many stations suffered damage from the hurricane. The article also indicated that before the hurricane, ongoing test of the program's software, which had delayed the start of Citi Bike in July, were not going well.

Boston, Massachusetts:

Boston's regional bike-share, The Hubway, held a contest to determine the best visualization of the trip data for 500,000 of its rides. The Hubway Data Visualization Challenge has announce the winners. The First Place award goes to Ta Chiraphadhanakul. All the other winners can been seen on the Data Visualization web page. There were 67 entries all of which are very good. We're sorry our friend Ollie didn't make the top 10!


images: NBC 7, Decobike, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Hubway, Bike Nation

Russell Meddin       bikesharephiladelphia.org

Bike-sharing Creates Job

With the U.S. political conventions next month and Presidential election in November, there is much talk about the nation's economy and job creation. During this time of budget cuts to important Federal and state programs, it is important to consider how the bike-sharing industry is contributing to the local economy of the cities and towns where these services exist and the jobs they provide. In addition to being employment, these jobs are green, improving the local environment and air quality. Right from their start-up, bike-sharing services can contribute 10 - 20 jobs to the local economy for smaller implementations and 30 - 50 jobs for larger ones.

A sample of bike-sharing services in the U.S. and Europe shows the following full-time and part-time jobs created for the various services. (Click on the chart below to enlarge.)

Not only has bike-sharing become a job creator, but it has also helped people get to their jobs. With annual memberships between $50 - $80, people are getting to work fast, adding daily activity to their lives to stay fit, and saving money. In fact, survey analysis by Capital Bikeshare in the Washington, D.C. region, suggests that members saved $819 per year on personal travel costs which is an annual savings of $15 million among the service's 18,000 at the time of the survey.

Boston on Massachusetts Bay begins Bike-sharing today with The Hubway

This morning New Balance Hubway is up and running in Boston. This brings Boston into the select group of North American cities with major bike-sharing systems. Although New Balance Hubway is planned as a regional system, it starts with a Phase I of around 600 bikes in about 60 stations in the central parts of Boston. Already the adjacent municipalities of Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline are exploring having Hubway stations, according to the Boston Globe. There is a handy user-friendly Request A Station Locator Map where anyone can suggest a station location in the region. The expansion of the system is a shoe-in with the New Balance Company as its naming sponsor.

Even with only 600 bikes, New Balance Hubway has installed a few large docking stations in the expectation of a many members. Although the system will only run spring through fall, the yearly subscription of $85 is a bit more than its sister program Capital Bikeshare in Washington, D.C. and Arlington, Virginia. For $10 more, you get a few months less. Both services are operated by the same company, Alta Bicycle Share, however, pricing is set by the governments for Capital Bikeshare and likely the same is true with Hubway.

In a very interesting twist on usage fees, New Balance Hubway is charging around 25% more to its 1-day and 3-day "casual" users over what it charges its annual members who keep the bike over the first 29 minutes (below).

The Bike-sharing Blog welcomes Boston and its region to the bike-sharing world.

images: The Bike-sharing Blog and The Hubway

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

Hubway Coming to Boston Area

This afternoon Boston signed the deal to bring bike-sharing to the Massachusetts Bay Area. With the goal of making a regional system, Boston will start Hubway, the name of its bike-sharing service in July with 600 bikes in 61 stations. The neighboring Cambridge, Brookline and Somerville communities are expected to join Hubway within the year and other communities to follow soon thereafter to ultimately have 5,000 bikes throughout the region with 300 stations. The system will use the Public Bike System Co. equipment, the same as in Washington, DC; Minneapolis; London; Melbourne; and Montréal. It will be operated by Alta Bicycle Share of Philadelphia which also operates the Washington, DC and Melbourne, Australia programs. The yearly subscription membership is pegged fairly high, at $85 which is $25 more a year than the comparable Nice Ride Minnesota and $10 more than Capital Bikeshare. The daily fare for casual users is the same as Minneapolis and Washington at $5.

The Boston-area athletic shoe company, New Balance, will be a major sponsor and has retained the naming rights to the system, according to a City of Boston press release. New Balance Hubway should be an interesting name for bike-sharing service considering bike balancing is a major element of every service.

image: The Bike-sharing Blog

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org