Washington Bike-sharing Survey Results Are In

The Washington, D.C. SmartBike program survey results are now complete and the District of Columbia Department of Transportation is kind to share them with The Bike-sharing Blog readers. The SmartBike D.C. program is nearly one year old with its birthday coming up in August. Of the 1,000 or so members of the program, 333 responded to the survey. The SmartBike D.C. program is in its pilot stage with 120 bikes, so these results may not broadly apply to other programs, but the data is interesting nonetheless.

A few points I found particularly interesting:

Question #2: A majority of the respondents use the bikes less than once per week (62%). This is likely due to the lacking availability of stations. With only 10 stations in the pilot program, most of the respondents find their needs not met as station coverage is poor. However, about a third use the bike 1 - 3 times per week (28%).

Question #3: A majority of respondents use the bikes for social purposes (48%) while commuting is the second most common use (41%).

Question #4: Nearly 70% of bike-sharing trips would have been done by foot had the bikes not been available. However, bike-sharing pulled 16% of the respondents away from driving a personal car for their trip and 19% away from a taxi.

Question #7: Trips combining bike-sharing and the subway or bus was low. A smartcard usable on all three systems, like the D.C. region’s SmarTrip card, could improve these numbers. Also, more stations at transit-accessible and non-transit accessible locations could improve this.

Question #8: 60% already own a bike and 40% don't own a bike. This affirms the belief that people with bikes would use the system. Also, with 40% not owning a bike, bike-sharing is creating bike trips that otherwise wouldn't be made.

This first survey of a 3rd generation bike-sharing program in North America is helpful in guiding its growth and that of other programs. Overall, it says that bike-sharing is working on this side of the pond too and that’s good news.

UPDATE 7/12/10: The results are now here.
image credit: Gwadzilla

Bike-share as Art

The prototype bicycle for Veloway’s new bike-sharing system has its art début today in the exhibit Bicycle: people + ideas in motion Philadelphia at The Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design.

The new bike-sharing system has its street début as Vélo Bleu next month in Nice, France. This system is the progressive evolution of Veloway’s OYBike in the United Kingdom and GreenBike at a university in Illinois. The system has solar powered stations with a multi use cable lock system for station docking or securing the bike while in use. The bikes are accessed by either a subscriber RFID card or by mobile telephone. If over the summer you are in Philadelphia come see the bike at Moore, or if you are so lucky to be on the Côte d’Azur take a spin on a Vélo Bleu.

Vélo Bleu starts on July 17. Sign-up after June 22 at VeloBleu.org.

Image: Veloway

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

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

Parisians Still Find Vélib’ Liberating

Results of the second annual Vélib’ survey in the June 2009 Vélib’ newsletter

What:
50,000,000 usages since start in July 2007
6,000,000 single day passes
170,000 yearly subscriptions
23,900 bicycles in service by the end of the 2009

Why:
94% of the users of Vélib’ are satisfied with the service.
90% stressed the ease of use and the price.
84% like swiping the subscription card rather than entering in numbers to access a bike.
54% are dissatisfied with the condition of the bikes - as a result, a new public service advertising campaign against Vélib’ vandalism has begun
56% are satisfied with the availability of bikes, but only 42% are satisfied with the availability of empty racks when returning a bike.
The best reasons for using Vélib’: 90% said it reduces pollution and it makes it is easier to get around, 86% said it helps complete the trip when using public transportation, 85% said it is good for their health and 69% noted the cost.

Where:
64% of the users are Parisians 36% live outside the city limits including the suburbs and visitors to the city.

Who:
18% are 16-25 years old, 37% are 26-35 years old, 23% are 36-45 years old and 22% are 46 and over.
Yearly subscribers are about 60% male and 40% female with 27% of them using Vélib’ as their principal mode of transportation.
Single day and seven day subscribers are close to 60% female and 40% male. 46% of users are less likely to use their car up from 28% last year.

When:
24% of usage is between 9 PM and 3 AM.
27% of subscribers go to work or school only with Vélib’.
Intermodal commuting to work or school in conjunction with other methods of public transport: 28% use Vélib’ to get to public transport, 28% use Vélib’ from public transport to their destination and 23% use Vélib’ to transfer between public transport.

image: Vélib’ newsletter

Russell Meddin www.bikesharephiladelphia.org

Rome’s Tumultuous Affair with Bike-sharing

The on again off again love affair with bike-sharing in Rome is on again. As of today, June 1, 2009, Roma’n’Bike was taken over by Rome’s Public Transport Company, Azienda Tranvie ed Autobus del Comune di Roma (ATAC) and rechristened, “atac bikesharing.” This odyssey chronicled in this blog: November 15, 2007: Roam around Rome, June 16, 2008 Bon Giorno, Roma and March 14, 2009 Cemusa closes Roma’n’Bike has been played out like a romance novel. Cemusa, the international advertising company is the jilted suitor, Rome’s Mayor, Gianni Alemanno embraces Bike-sharing then gives it the “cold shoulder,” while the citizens of Rome's efforts to nurture and grow the program have further embellished the story.

The new system will be strictly pay as you go! Expanded to operate 24 hours a day, each ½ hour is €0.50 with an initial €5.00 registration fee. There is no time gratis and are no subscription fees according to Wanted in Rome, an English language Roman information site. Not all are happy about losing the 30 minute free initial ride; inflammatory comments such as “the death of bike-sharing” are seen in the Italian Bike-Sharing Roma blog. Rather than the death of bike-sharing, this is another example of the trend to fund bike-sharing through a municipality or a service in the municipality. In Nice, France the regional government is funding the system. In Montréal, Canada the parking authority funds the system.

Update: July 23, 2009 - There are 150 ATAC bikes in 19 stations. The locations are: Arenula, Argentina, Campo dei Fiori, Colonna, Fontana di Trevi, Navona, Oratorio, Piazza dell'Oro, Pantheon, Parlamento, Pontefici, Popolo, S. Andrea della Valle, San Silvestro, Scrofa, Sforza Cesarini, Spagna, Tritone and Venezia

image credit: Roma'n'Bike & atac bikesharing

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

Transit Taking Transit

Equal distribution of bikes is one of the hardest nuts to crack with bike-sharing, especially if your program has 20,600 bikes. The creative minds of Vélib' have developed a formidable solution to this problem - take a bus!

Starting May 4, the first of two Vélib' buses began transporting bikes from stations with an over-supply to those in need. The buses hold 62 bikes each, which is nearly three times more than the trucks which are used now for smaller stations. Staff simply walk the bikes onto the bus and with the use of a pulley system, raise one bike at a time, and send it to the other end of the bus via a roller system to keep the bikes compact during transport.

Here's a video showing how it works:

by mairiedeparis

Another reminder that bike-sharing complements other forms of transit and is complemented.

Image credit: Vélib'

Paul DeMaio, MetroBike
Russell Meddin, www.bikesharephiladelphia.org

Melbourne Tender Out

The Victoria, Australia Department of Transport released a Request for Tender (RFT) to find an operator of a bike-sharing program for Melbourne. According to the Department of Transport's website, "The Public Bicylce [sic] System will provide bicycle stations in key locations around inner Melbourne and give the public access to bicycles from the system 365 days a year, for short, inner-city trips. The total system, upon start up will have about 600 bicycles within the inner city."

A briefing session will be Monday at 10am for parties interested in learning more. The tender closes on June 18.

p.s. - The bike-sharing program operator should also include a spellcheck program in their tender for the Dept. of Transport to help them spell "Bicycle" correctly. Of course, we here at The Bike-sharing Blog never make a misspellin.

image credit: Tulane University

UPDATE - August 6, 2009:

JCDecaux pulled out of bidding for Melbourne’s bike-sharing tender competition. Steve O’Connor of JCDecaux Australia says that the Melbourne plan for 600 bikes is too small and lacked commercial incentives according to Australia’s The Age. JCDecaux won the tender for Brisbane’s 2000 bike system and is currently installing the program there.

The Bike-sharing Blog Turns 2

Happy Birthday to The Bike-sharing Blog! It turns 2 today. If The Blog were a child, it would be a toddler already.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes this stage of life as, "During this time, your child is becoming increasingly more mobile, and aware of himself and his surroundings. During this stage, your toddler will show greater independence, begin to show defiant behavior, [...] and imitate the behavior of others, especially adults and older children."

Much of the same can be said of bike-sharing in general: it assists people in becoming more mobile and aware of themselves and their surroundings. Bike-sharing is helping people show greater independence away from the automobile. We are showing defiant behavior by denying the status quo of automobile-dominated societies and launching ourselves into the post-carbon age. We are imitating the behavior of greener societies which have placed greater demands on the mobility and flexibility that bicycling offers and are receiving the benefits of being healthier societies, or of one day striving to become one.

Your contributions about local bike-sharing activities have been tremendous and enhanced The Blog's efforts towards advocating for bike-sharing around the world. Thank you for your continued interest in bike-sharing and The Bike-sharing Blog.

Sincerely,
Paul DeMaio
MetroBike, LLC
Washington, D.C., USA

Velo-city 2009 and Villo!

I've recently returned from the Velo-city 2009 conference in Brussels, Belgium where I spoke in a session dedicated to bike-sharing. The packed session had presentations by:

- Esther Anaya, Bicicleta Club de Catalunya (BACC), Spain, speak about "Public Bikes, are they developing as true public transport in Spain?";
- Sara Basterfield and German Dector-Vega, CTC and Transport for London, UK, spoke about "Bike-sharing in European Cities"; and
- Jean-Sébastien Decaux, JCDecaux, France, spoke about "Public bicycles in Brussels. Why they have a future?".

My presentation was titled "Bike-sharing: its History and Future" and can be downloaded now. The others' presentations should be available on the Velo-city website in two weeks. Each presentation was insightful and well worth a view.

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While in Brussels I got to see the preparations for the relaunch of Villo!, the region's new and improved bike-sharing program. The program got off to a poor start a few years ago, however, now it's coming back with a greater number of bikes and stations to tame this city of autos. The reincarnated program will have 2,500 bikes at 180 stations and will be available in the 16 cities of the Brussels capital region. The service will be offered year-round by JCDecaux through an advertising contract.

The bike facilities in Brussels are decent, with cycle tracks and bike lanes. However, these facilities generally they aren't being used. Offering bike-sharing on this greater scale will provide a solid option in moving about the compact medieval city and its surroundings to make a dent in the auto-centric behavior and begin to foster a bike culture.

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

Pioneering Bike-sharing Program Goes Dark After 11 Years

On Sunday May 10, 2009 the world’s first public automated information based bike-sharing program shut down. Vélo à la Carte started in 1998 by Clear Channel Adshel in Rennes, France ended its 11 years of almost free service in this capital city of Brittany. Vélo à la Carte is credited with starting the 21^st Century bike-share revolution now spot lighted on the world stage with Vélib in Paris. A bicycle revolution that is now spreading to cities all over the world. 

With only 200 bicycles over 25 stations in a city with 200,000 inhabitants, Vélo à la Carte has seen almost 1 million usages with 11,000 yearly subscribers. It was the first system deployed for the general public in a metropolitan area utilizing a RFID (radio frequncy identification) card to access the bikes.

Over the years, three different bicycle designs were used in the system. A €23 deposit gave users access to 2 hours of no charge bike-sharing. It is a sad passing in the vélos en libre service world.   Vélo à la Carte

Do not shed a tear for the Rennais. Although, they will no longer have Vélo à la Carte, they will have a complete menu of 900 new le vélo star bikes in 40 stations starting June 6, 2009. In the near future, it will serve a larger area plus the suburbs with 1285 bikes and 117 stations . Le vélo star system keeps Rennes as an innovator in bike-sharing. The regional transit card, Kerrigo, will also access the bikes.

le vélo star

A spokesperson for Clear Channel said that Vélo à la Carte was part of a street furniture (bus shelters) program in Rennes. The contract exspired recently. Rennes tendered the new street furniture and bike-sharing as two sepearate contracts. Clear Channel won the street furniture tender maintaining its advertising presence in the City. Keolis won the bike tender and will start operating the scheme in June. Kéolis’s contract will have no link to advertising.

Photos: Rennes Métropoles, Vélo à la Carte, Ouest-France  and Kéolis

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

London Cycle Hire Shifts into High Gear

Even without an operator for the system, Transport of London has begun submitting planning applications for locating bike-sharing stations. This week the first four applications have been submitted to the Camden Council one of the areas in Greater London see map. The applications for the rest of the 396 stations will be continually submitted throughout the spring and summer to have the 6000 bike system ready to open in May 2010.

Keeping an election promise, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: "I pledged to deliver a cycling revolution across the city, and there is now a growing excitement about our cycle hire scheme, which will give all Londoners the opportunity to hop on a bike and experience the joys of cycling. Much like hailing a cab, people will be able to pick up one of 6,000 bikes, and zip around town to their hearts content - not only a quick, easy, and healthy option, but one that will also make London a more livable city," reports Britain’s Bike for All. With bike-sharing stations no more than 300 meters apart, the London system - is expected to generate an additional 40,000 bicycle trips every day in central London.

London is not the only United Kingdom capital looking into bike-sharing. According to The Scotsman News yesterday, Edinburgh’s transport bosses are to push on with plans to introduce a bike sharing scheme in the Capital. The Edinburgh council chiefs said that the scheme, which would help reach the target of four per cent of all journeys being by bike by 2010.

Russell Meddin www.bikesharephiladelphia.org

photo: Transport of London

The Problem of Moral Hazard

A recent article by CNN titled "City bike-sharing picks up speed" discusses the problem of moral hazard. Wikipedia defines moral hazard as "the prospect that a party insulated from risk may behave differently from the way it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk." Wikipedia goes on to define a specific type of moral hazard which is called a " 'principal-agent problem', where one party, called an agent, acts on behalf of another party, called the principal. The agent usually has more information about his or her actions or intentions than the principal does, because the principal usually cannot perfectly monitor the agent. The agent may have an incentive to act inappropriately (from the viewpoint of the principal) if the interests of the agent and the principal are not aligned." As proven by JCDecaux's recent threats to close stations plagued by theft and vandalism as reported here at The Bike-sharing Blog in February, the bike-sharing industry has proven it is not free of controversy and has the problem of moral hazard.

The CNN article quoted me stating that "[T]he advertising company does not benefit from revenues generated by the system as the jurisdiction does, so the advertising company does not have the same incentive to keep the bikes maintained as the jurisdiction would if it were operating the system. In fact, the better the advertising company has the bikes maintained, the more expensive it would be, and the less profit they would keep from the advertising contract."

Stronger oversight of bike-sharing programs by local governments is needed to ensure the principal knows as much as the agent, as described above. One important step towards this is separating the advertising contract with the bike-sharing contract so true costs can be realized. A better method of provision could be the locality providing a management fee to the operator for the bike-sharing service. This management fee would include staffing, maintenance, distribution, and customer care.

The service provider also should benefit monetarily from the success of the program and conversely be fined for not providing the quality of service to which they agreed to perform. Bike-sharing contracts should have carrots and sticks to encourage not just fair play by the agent, but superior behavior that is appropriate for a modern transit service with high customer interaction and expectations.

image credit: Wall Street Journal