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: First Week of August 2011

A lot has been going on in the Bike-sharing World over the past few weeks. Let's get started.

Good News in Europe:

Paris: Vélib' celebrated its 4e anniversaire last month by now averaging 75,000 daily trips on the ubiquitous grey bikes. After a period of flat growth, the first quarter of this year has seen the greatest increase of usage yet, and 20,000 new subscribers according to France3.

London: For Boris Bike's first birthday a few days ago, Mayor Boris Johnson confirmed that Barclays is extending its sponsorship of the system with another £25 million ($41 million USD) to expand the popular program into the western Boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham in 2013. This is in addition to the current eastern expansion for next summer's Olympics. Barclays Cycle Hire, with only one forth the number of bikes as Paris, realizes around 25,000 trips daily, around 1/3 of the 75,000 in Paris. That is definitely something to bank on!

Newcastle on Tyne, UK: A new mobile phone bike-share scheme, Scratchbike, has begun with 150 bikes tethered to 15 racks in the central Newcastle. The program is sponsored by NE1, the Newcastle Business Improvement Company. It is scheduled to be a city-wide service, which incidentally began as a student-run program at Newcastle University.

Dublin, Ireland: Dublinbikes two weeks ago reached an all time high of 6,280 rentals in one day! That's around 12 trips per bike per day! Dublinbikes is at the top of the list of the most successful bike-sharing systems in the world. This summer it has added 4 new stations and is adding another 100 bikes to bring its fleet up to 550.

Two new bike rental schemes make riding the Inter-City Rails easier:

Belgium- Blue-bike recently set up 35 locations with around 1,000 bikes at train stations in cities and towns throughout the northern part of Belgium. It's mostly a pick up and return to same location system. It is similar to the original concept of the Deutsche Bahn Call-a-Bike system at rail stations.  As Call-a-Bike has matured, it has become a multiple fixed locations bike-sharing system in many German cities. One may pick up a bike at one location and return it to another. The service is similar to The Netherlands' OV-fiets service.The Bike-sharing Blog hopes the same for Blue-bike as it matures. An online sign up for a membership card is needed to rent these bikes. The card costs €31 ($45 USD) and the daily rate of €3.50 ($5 USD). Also in Belgium, a bike-sharing system with 240 bikes is coming to the city of Namurs.

United Kingdom: Brompton Docks is a "left luggage lockers" folding bike rental system piloted this summer at a suburban London train station. These Brompton folding bikes must be replaced in the same set of lockers from which they were removed. Renting cost starts at £4 ($6.50 USD) for one day to £1.60 ($2.60 USD) for 23 days or more. As with the Belgium system, a membership and a smart card are needed.

And don't miss the OBIS handbook:

The Optimizing Bike Sharing in European Cities (OBIS) handbook has three years worth of data from studying bike-sharing in 10 European counties to identify the best practices, success factors, limits and market potentials, and the optimized strategies. This guide has published in it the authors' key findings and recommendations as a comprehensive manual in the form of a handbook. Read The Bike-sharing Blog's March posting about the OBIS Project and Final Conference.

Download a copy of this handbook here.

Bad News in Europe:

The ax falls on bike-sharing in Aix-en-Provence, France. After almost four years V'Hello said its last adieu in May to the citizens of this southern French city. With only 143 users, the municipal government felt it was financially better to cancel its contract for the 200-bike, 16-station service with JCDecaux rather than to keep it. According to LePoint, even with low usage, the outdoor advertising company wanted to charge Aix-en-Provence over €400 ($575 USD) more per bike per year than it charges Paris to maintain the system.

Good news in Eurasia:

Batumi, Georgia: This resort town on the Black Sea now has a 120-bike and 10-station bike-sharing program as BatumVelo began three weeks ago. The program uses the Smoove technology. Whether one subscribes or is a casual user, there is no free usage time. For every 15 minutes of use the subscriber pays 0.50GEL ($0.30 USD) or the casual user pays 0.75GEL ($0.45 USD) whether going to the beach or pedaling around town.

Good news in North America:

Long Beach, New York: The South Beach Miami DecoBike has landed a 400 bike and 40 station contract making a beach head in New York State. Long Beach, New York, which is just next to New York City on Long Island, is scheduled to have its fully operational bike-sharing program in September. Getting to the sands of the Atlantic Ocean from the Long Island Railroad Station will be a breeze on a DecoBike Long Beach.

While talking about New York, for the last two years at Summer Streets in New York City, there have been bike-sharing demonstrations as part of the activities. Will there be a bike-sharing contract announcement this year?

The Bike-sharing Blog expects Chattanooga, Tennessee also to begin a bike sharing program soon. According to Outdoor Chattanooga, there will be 30 bike stations located around the central business district, the UTC campus and the North Shore. The system will use the same style bike as the Washington, DC/Arlington, Boston, and Minneapolis programs.

Good News in Asia:

Hangzhou, China: According to the HHN Information Center, the Hangzhou Public Transport Company says that, as of now, there are usually around 200,000 daily usages of the system. Generally, each bike is used around 5 times a day.The the highest single day usage was 320,000 rides. There are currently 2,416 service points for 60,600 bicycles.

To keep up with the ever changing Bike-sharing World, keep referring to the The Bike-sharing World Map

images: Vélib', Barclays Cycle Hire, Blue-bike, Brompton Docks, V'Hello, Batum Velo by Jan Malinowski, DecoBike Long Beach

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

East Coast/West Coast - August is Bike-sharing Demo Month in the USA

Bike-sharing Demonstrations:

August 2nd in San Francisco

During the Car-Free Sunday road closure in Golden Gate Park on John F. Kennedy Drive at Conservatory Drive East from 10 AM to 3:30 PM, MUNI (San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority), and City CarShare wants you to try out the BiXi, system of Bike-sharing.

August 8th, 15th and 22nd in New York City:

Enjoy “Summer Streets!” While Park Avenue is closed to motor vehicle traffic from 72nd Street to the Brooklyn Bridge on these three consecutive Saturdays 7 AM to 1 PM, there will be bike-sharing demonstrations of bicycles and automated docking stations from various international companies. These will include: B-cycle, BiXi, Eco Trips, NY400-Bike & Roll and Samba. The times and locations will be on the NYCDOT Summer Streets page.

August 11th and 12th in and around Seattle

At the Discover Center in South Lake Union in Seattle on Tuesday, 10 AM to 6 PM, August the 11th come and compare the bikes from: B-cycle, The Bike Share Group and BiXi, If that isn’t enough, come over to Redmond Town Center on Wednesday, 12 PM to 8 PM, August the 12th and do it all over again.

August 14th and 16th in Portland, Oregon

Spend a bike-sharing weekend in Portland on Friday August 14th at the Pavilion in Waterfront Park just under the Burnside Bridge and on Sunday August 16th at the Southeast Portland Sunday Parkways Event along the route between Colonel Summers and Mt. Tabor Parks. The reward will be an array of different bike-sharing companies: B-cycle, The Bike Share Group, BiXi, and Portland Bicycle Tours are all asking riders to give them a try. Schweers Technologies originally scheduled as a participant will not attend.

August is a great month for travel and biking. So share you travel time, enjoy these events and learn more about bike-sharing!

Russell Meddin www.bikesharephiladelphia.org

"Bloomberg Eyes Bike Program for Home"

An article in The New York Times titled "In Paris, Bloomberg Eyes Bike Program for Home" reports New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in Paris in late September and fascinated with Velib'. Bloomberg "acknowledged the challenges of bringing home a popular Parisian bike rental program [...] saying he was unsure it would translate to New York. Noting challenges like roads damaged by seasonal changes, the lack of bike lanes, liability problems and the possibility that commuters would not want to carry helmets to work, Mr. Bloomberg said: 'You try to see whether it fits, and some parts of it will, but it may very well give you an idea to do something totally different.' "

Yes, there are challenges, NY, but nothing that the Big Apple can't overcome.

Seasonal changes - Sure, but with bike-sharing programs all over northern climes like Helsinki, Stockholm, and Oslo; damaged roads haven't stopped them.

Liability problems - The easy solution would be to evict all of NY's lawyers. However, just in case that's not possible, insurance and waivers are needed. Also, more bike safety education and more stringently enforced traffic laws are necessary.

And fortunately for bike riders, helmets carry easily on top of one's head.

photo credit: Michael Sawyer/Associated Press