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

Kickin' it into High-gear this Summer in Montreal

BIXI has become so popular in Montreal that the city will be expanding its bike-sharing service from 3,000 to 5,000 bikes ahead of time. The expansion was to occur next year, but due to the program's successes and the public demand, Phase II of adding 2,000 more bikes into unserved parts of the city will be done this summer. The following is a press release from Stationnement de Montréal, the operator of BIXI:

"In response to numerous requests from Montréal boroughs and residents, Stationnement de Montréal has been authorized by the city’s executive committee to launch phase II of BIXI this summer.

"This second phase will involve adding 2,000 BIXI bikes and 100 new stations in the boroughs of Mercier/Hochelaga‐Maisonneuve, Côte‐des‐Neiges/Notre‐Dame‐de‐Grâce, Villeray/Saint‐Michel Parc‐Extension, and Le Sud‐Ouest. More stations will also be added in Outremont and Rosemont‐ La Petite‐Patrie to complete the deployment in those boroughs. In all, the service will count 5,000 bikes distributed among 400 stations.

"With this second phase, the project budget increases from $15 million to $23 million.

"When the project was launched this spring, Montrealers immediately took ownership of the service. In just seven weeks, they have made more than 220,000 individual trips covering over a million kilometres. “Adding more bikes and stations will allow us to serve a larger percentage of the public and to be present in more high‐traffic areas, such as near educational institutions, public markets, and tourist attractions such as the Biodome,” declared Alain Ayotte, executive vice‐president of Stationnement de Montréal.

“ 'We are extremely pleased by the resounding success of this project, in which we believed from the very start,' declared Jean Simon, president, Primary Metal – North America. “We are delighted to be part of this innovative service, which helps make Montréal an even more enjoyable place to live and work. Our support of BIXI is in line with Rio Tinto Alcan’s commitment to environmental sustainability and fighting climate change.”

Update: Good news: In the almost two months of service, the over 225,000 BIXI trips were taken by almost 47,000 users of which over 6,300 are long term subscribers.
Not so good news: At a recent inspection of 10% of BIXI stations by reporters of La Presse, they found 1 in 5 bikes in disrepair and some docking racks vandalized and unusable. Stationnement de Montréal says that it has technicians out daily.

image credit: The Monitor (ironically from an article titled "The West End to remain Bixi-less until next year")

Canadians think BIXI Bike-sharing a Capital Idea

Just four weeks after its inauguration in Montréal, the BIXI bike-sharing system began a 4 month trail of 50 bikes in 4 stations in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city on June 8, 2009. Canada News reports, that the program — which allows residents, workers and visitors in the National Capital Region to travel in a greener way — is also part of a feasibility study for a permanent bike share program which would bring 300 to 500 shared bikes to the region next year. At CDN$3.00 for a daily pass, BIXI Ottawa-Gatineau is a bargain compared to Montréal’s BIXI CDN$5.00 daily pass.

Even at CDN$5.00, 22,000 of the 75,000 trips on BIXI has been by casual or non subscriber riders since the start on May 12^th. There are now almost 4000 yearly subscribers. With around 4500 daily trips in the system, it has a healthy 3.45 usages per bike per day!

Canadians on the west coast are also getting a BIXI “fixie” this weekend in Vancouver. From Friday June 12^th through Monday June 15^th there is a hands-on BIXI demonstration near the Science World geodesic dome.

Image: BIXI Ottawa-Gatineau
Statistic Public Bike Systems

Russell Meddin www.bikesharephiladelphia.org

Montréalers are taking to BIXI

For two weeks now Montréalers have experienced BIXI bike-sharing. Here are some of the first statistics:
- There about 2250 subscribers to the system.
- Through May 28, 738 bikes have been dispursed over 144 stations with a ratio of about 2 racks per bike.
- Almost 26,900 trips have been taken on BIXI of which 11,000 have been non-subscription casual users (or about 2.2 trips per bike per day). This is higher than the smaller Washington, D.C. system which earns around 1.5 trips per bike per day, but less than 7 trips per bike per day in the Lyon and Paris systems.

There have been a few growing pains as the system strides to its goal of 3,000 bikes with 300 stations in the central core of Montréal by June 7. During the first days, the National Post reports that bikes were locked in place because of erroneous or mischievious "repair required" indications. Comments of difficulty in taking a bike more than once on a day pass were expressed on the blog spacingmontréal, which showed that more explanation is sometimes needed.

To solve the confusion of the day membership, BIXI made this video:
The Bike-sharing Blog hopes to keep you up to date on the BIXI experiment.

Photo: The Chonicle

Video: BIXI

Statistic Public Bike Systems

Russell Meddin www.bikesharephiladelphia.org

BIXI -The First Large Scale Bike-sharing Program In North America

Tuesday morning, May 12, 2009 at 10:30 AM at City Hall in Montréal, Quebec, Canada, BIXI the largest bike-sharing program in North America begins. With 3,000 bikes and 300 stationes planned, it will be 30 times larger than the program in Washington, DC.  Whether you subscribe for $78 a year, $28 a month or $5 a day, there is no charge for the first 30 minute ride. The self-contained solar powered bike stations are innovative in that they are easily reconfirgured and redeployed if necessary. The name is a contraction of BIcyle and taXI. You just pick up a bike at one station and drop it off at any one of the 299 others, just like a taxi! Watch the video:

Russell Meddin  www.bikesharephiladelphia.org

Around the Bike-sharing World this first week of May

From Australia:

Starting this week, as a way to increase awareness of Bike-sharing down under, Common Bike is offering a three week bike-sharing program in Melbourne, Australia. The demonstration is organized by students with the assistance of Ronald Haverman of Bike Sharing Solutions from the Netherlands. As reported in the The Age, the demonstration coincides with the Melbourne Road Minister's plan to ask for a tender offer to be issued for a large bike-sharing program there. Mr. Haverman said that public bike hire would be good for Melbourne continuing, "I think it's good for the very spread-out suburbs, the low-density areas, you need bike stations almost everywhere." Watch a video of the RMIT student run bike-hire demonstration.

From Asia:

Residents and tourists enjoy Green Bangkok Bike in Thailand’s capital. The manual system began last August with 300 bikes and eight service counters and stations. It serves the historic Rattanakosin section of Bangkok and is run by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration. There is no cost as long as you can provide a valid national ID card or passport.

From North America:

As the images of last summer’s Bike-sharing experiment at the 2008 Republican and Democratic National Conventions in Minneapolis and Denver fade from our memory, so does the realization of bike-sharing systems in both those cities in 2009. Both Minneapolis and Denver had planned to have systems up and running this summer.
In March, Minneapolis announced it was postponing its 1000 bike Nice Ride program from spring/summer 2009 to summer 2010 Bike-sharing Blog March 16, 2009. 
Yesterday, Denver postponed its 600 bike Denver B-cycle debut until spring 2010 as reported in Westword.

BIXI begins in Montréal on Tuesday May 12, 2009!

  

Photos: Commonbike, Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, Nice Ride, B-cycle and BIXI

Russell Meddin  www.bikesharephiladelphia.org

Introducing Montreal's Bixi

On Sunday, September 21, Montreal's mayor Gérald Tremblay kicked off their city's newest transit service - Bixi - with 40 bikes at four stations for a 6-week free fall demonstration period before a grand launch next April 15 with 2,400 bikes. The program's name (sounds like "Dixie" with a B instead of a D), a combination of bicycle and taxi, was created by an individual in a public contest and voted on by the program's future customers.

"High-tech and vandalism-resistant, Montreal's bikes feature comfy seats, three speeds and raised handlebars, and will be stationed at solar-powered docking stations that can be moved according to demand. The first half-hour will be free, the next half hour $1.50, and successive half-hours get pricier; the objective is to use the bikes for short hauls," reports Canada's Globe and Mail.

Additionally, "The parking authority invested $15-million into Bixi, but says it expects to break even; 80 per cent of costs are expected to be defrayed through memberships, which would cost $78 a year or $28 a month." A 24-hour pass is available for $5.

Having recently visited Stationnement de Montreal (Montreal Parking) last month, I was quite impressed with their system and business model. They are one of the first bike-sharing service providers of which I'm aware that are not advertising-centric, but rather mobility-centric as with their other duties with managing Montreal's parking with the quasi-governmental organization. Other mobility providers like departments of transportation take note on this means of provision. This is a new model which I'm sure will do well.


Montrealais, enjoy.

photos credit: Stationnement de Montreal

Sneak Peek at Montreal

I recently returned from visiting the good folks at Stationnement de Montréal in Quebec, Canada. They are the city's public-private partnership agency that is tasked with ensuring "the optimal management of paid on-street and off-street public parking to promote the development of economic activity." They are the city's parking agency, plain and simple. Not happy with the advertising model of bike-sharing which has become the norm, they stepped up to the task of developing their own bike-sharing technology with their own funds - $15M of them.

Unlike other kiosk systems, Montreal's system is designed with a platform which will be uninstalled for the cold season, considering that January averages 12 degrees Fahrenheit (-11 degrees Celcius). Call me a whimp, but that's well below my line where I'm not riding. Rather than the expense of hooking each station up with power, Montreal's system will be powered by the sun - two small solar panels will electrify each station. Key fobs will be used in place of smartcards to make rummaging around in one's wallet or purse easier as the fob simply can be added to one's keychain. The bikes are step-thru models specially designed for the program and appear streamlined and durable. As Stationnement de Montreal says on the Website, their bike-sharing system "was inspired by other systems already in place in cities around the world, taking the best elements from each and avoiding errors that have been made along the way."

As I've blogged about before, they are allowing the public to come up with the program's name through their "Find my name!" Website. This is a good way to create buzz about the soon-to-launch program, generate civic pride, and it sure beats paying an ad agency thousands of dollars to do the same thing. Voting ends in three weeks and the grand prize is a lifetime membership with the program. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.


Montreal is planning to have a soft launch in September with 40 bikes at four stations before closing the program for their harsh winter. During their cold season when only the truly die-hard are biking, Stationnement de Montreal will tweak the system and get it ready for the big launch in Spring 2009 with 2,400 bikes at 300 stations. This will surely make it the largest bike-sharing program in North America at that time. Much research and design has gone into this system and I believe it will do very well.

Bike-sharing will do well in Montreal as it's a great city for biking, likely one of the best in North America. Rather than the uni-directional cycle tracks, or physically separated bike lanes, that are more common in bike-friendly cities and towns, Montreal has bi-directional cycle tracks. It's a wider track made for two-way bike traffic. The cycle tracks downtown have a concrete divider separating them from motor vehicle traffic and the residential neighborhoods have a parking lane separating cyclists from motor vehicle traffic. The physical separation makes all the difference in encouraging cycling. It's more than a coincidence that most of the bike-friendly jurisdictions are those which have cycle tracks.



image credits: MetroBike and Stationnement de Montreal

Montreal rushing to share bikes

An article titled "Montreal pedals way to 'self-serve' first" in The Gazette (Montreal) states, "The first city-issue self-serve bicycles will start to appear at specially designed outdoor bike stations in the fall of 2008. By the fall of 2009 [..], there should be 2,400 bikes available for rent for as little as $1 per half-hour of use at 300 stations around the city's central neighbourhoods, [Andre Lavallee, executive committee member responsible for Montreal's transportation issues] said."

This won't be the first program in North America as D.C. is getting pretty close to launching, but it looks like it could be the first in Canada... unless those folks in Vancouver have something to say about it! Based on the number of bikes and investment (below), however, this could be the largest bike-sharing program in North America.

"The city has commissioned Stationnement Montreal, a subsidiary of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, to design and execute the bike rental system. The company, which currently manages the city's paid on-street and public parking lots, will invest $15 million to get the project up and running, and expects to eventually recoup these costs."

"We used to see cycling as recreation, but now thousands of people are using bikes to get to work, or school. This summer, we actually saw traffic jams of cyclists on some of our new bike routes, like St. Urbain. Something is changing right now in Montreal and we all have to come along on this wave," said Lavallee.

Something is changing indeed.

photo credit: Conférence de Montréal