
We thank our readers for supporting both The Bike-sharing World Map and The Bike-sharing Blog and look forward to the next million views and all the new services that will come on-line during that time.
The Bike-sharing Blog provides information on bike-sharing services around the world and is the sister publication to The Meddin Bike-sharing World Map. The Blog is provided by MetroBike, LLC based in Washington, D.C.


Europe:
1) Be a bike-friendly community first.
Your community should be bike-friendly first with a dense network of bike facilities, such as cycle tracks, bike lanes, and trails. This network of bike facilities will enable bicycle riders and your future bike-sharing customers to easily and safely travel through your community by bike. The League of American Bicyclists’ Bicycle Friendly America Yearbook offers examples of what other communities have done to become bike-friendly. Many communities with bike-sharing services also have high Bicycle Friendly Community ratings and include: Arlington, VA, Washington, DC, Minneapolis, and Denver. As you implement a bike-sharing service, your community should strive to be at least a bronze-level Bicycle Friendly Community.
2) Bike-sharing is not cheap, so secure sufficient funding.
By implementing a bike-sharing service, you’re launching a new transit service. It may be less expensive to purchase and operate than a bus or rail service, but sufficient funding is required to make it successful. While the types of bike-sharing systems vary, costs can be up to $5,000 per bike for capital and operating expenses can range from $100 - $200 per bike per month. A service with a couple hundred or thousand bikes is pricey. However, while implementing a service is not cheap, bike-sharing can be a cost-effective public transport option.
3) Size and density matter.
A bus service with a solitary bus or just a couple of stops will only be accessible by a limited number of people—those living, working, or playing near the stops. The same can be said for bike-sharing, as the greater the number of bikes and the wider the network of stations translates into a more successful service. Station density should be such that a customer can find a station every couple of blocks. In fact, a bike-sharing service’s usefulness will increase geometrically with each additional station as each station expands the reach of your service by better connecting places into this new transit system.
4) Get private sector sponsors.
Bike-sharing lends itself to public-private partnerships. Private organizations can assist the implementing agency by sponsoring the service or purchasing a station for outside of their worksite. They also find bike-sharing good for providing their employees a healthy commuting option, making their location more accessible to customers, being environmentally healthy, and promoting a green service. The public benefits by having some of the costs of buying and operating a service covered by private organizations. Whether the implementing agency is a local government or non-profit, both have successfully taken advantage of sponsorship to help expand their service’s reach. Barclays Bank sponsored Barclays Cycle Hire in London to the tune of $40M. BlueCross BlueShield of Minnesota sponsored Nice Ride Minnesota in Minneapolis with $1.75M and has offered up to a $1.5M match for expansion of the service. For bike-sharing implementers, private engagement can expand a service in a cost-efficient way -- creating a win-win for both parties.
5) Don’t do it alone, work regionally.
Bike-sharing can produce the greatest benefits when done regionally, which is why the Paris and Washington, DC areas have regional services. For commuting trips, bike-sharing is ideal for the first-mile/last-mile challenge of getting folks to and from longer haul transit services. Implementing a service takes a lot of work, but sharing the workload, and expenses, among multiple jurisdictions helps a great deal. Additionally, it’s important that jurisdictions within a region have the same, compatible service, so riding from one jurisdiction to another is smooth and makes for a pleasant customer experience.
With the number of bike-sharing services in the U.S. and worldwide rapidly increasing each year, bike-sharing has proven effective at serving the public well for short urban trips as well as complementing other modes of transit. However, like any other transit mode, there are pitfalls both shared with other transit modes and unique to bike-sharing which should be avoided to ensure a successful and well-used service. Following this advice will get your jurisdiction rolling in the right direction.
Paul DeMaio is the founder of the bike-sharing consultancy MetroBike, LLC and co-author of The Bike-sharing Blog.
This article was originally published in Shareable.
image credit: League of American Bicyclists
Buenos Aires, Argentina has joined the world of bike-sharing with a staffed 2nd generation system. The city’s bicycle program, "Mejor en Bici", released 100 bikes onto the streets of Buenos Aires this past December 1st. The human-powered pilot program has grown to employ a fleet of 500 ‘bicis’, which users can pick up at any of the 12 hubs after signing up with the attendant, and drop it off at any other hub during the hours of operation. The hubs are open from 8am – 10pm during the week and 9 – 3 on the weekends. To help support the service, Mejor en Bici and the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy are developing a network of 60 miles of cycle tracks, almost half of which is already complete. The city hopes to eventually expand to a fully automated 5,000-bike program, putting it on par with some of the world’s largest 3rd generation services.
Editor's note: Mexico City also had its own "Mejor en Bici" service with three locations in 2008, which grew into what is now EcoBici.
By Jesse Simmons, Bike-sharing Blog contributing writer
image credit: Amalia Holub

What does a bike-sharing trip look like? Well there are many home videos out there showing the first bike-sharing ride in Paris, Denver, or Montréal. There are educational videos showing safety while bike-sharing. There are also videos of dare-devil rodeo stunts on these transportation workhorses. However, one of the most fascinating is this amazing animation video from Dr. Martin Austwick at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis - University College London (CASA). His video shows what thousands of bike-sharing trips look like in one day when the London Tube was on strike. Folks bailed the rail and hiked to the bike.
This video was made possible by the collaborative work of Oliver O’Brien (his blog at Suprageography) also at CASA, who mapped the routes from station to station. In this video, a bike picked up flashes red, then leaves a Barclays Cycle Hire Blue trail as it goes, and flashes yellow when returned. The information to make this video came from Transport of London after one million trips were made on the system.
Using this same information of all these bike-sharing trips from July to November in London, interactive “spider maps” of bike movement from dock to dock are now available. With O’Brien’s spectral London Bike Flow Map, each day’s trips from each station can be seen. David Quinn, (QUA, from MIT), created a Trip Frequency Map that shows a value for the amount of bikes that move from one station to another.
When data on bike-sharing is made available, it becomes a very good tool in determining the best way to structure services to serve the public with personal mobility. There are more videos on bike-sharing services from around the world on the Bike-sharing Video Pages. There are also more CASA visualizations available on the Bike-sharing Metrics Page.
Co-authors Paul DeMaio and Russell Meddin
While the Middle East dominates the news this week, bike-sharing is dominating the Middle East. A CycloCity system, Q Bike, in Doha, Qatar has begun operating. The program is a joint effort of the Ministry of Municipality and Urban Planning and q.media Decaux, a subsidiary of JCDecaux.image: Gulf Times & Dana Passech
Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org


The first Public Bike Hire scheme in Auckland was launched by Nextbikes in Auckland CBD in 2008. In 2010, the scheme expanded to include Devonport and Takapuna on the North Shore. At that time the scheme had 170 bikes on the street sharing public bike parking stands. The scheme ceased trading in early November 2010.There is no solid requirement for the number of bikes and stations, however, in the short-term the service must begin by their hosting of the World Rugby Cup. (Any guess on when this is so I can book my ticket?)
Auckland Transport was created on 1st November 2010 following governance changes in the Auckland region. It is a council controlled organisation responsible for transport provision and transport planning in Auckland (population 1.4 million). It has a strong policy mandate to promote and develop walking and cycling as part of an integrated transport strategy. The Auckland Regional Land Transport Strategy (RLTS) provides the strategic long term direction for transport, including cycling, in the city region.
Since the demise of the Nextbikes scheme, Auckland Council and Auckland Transport have each already considered proposals for, and adopted resolutions in support of further investigating a public bike hire scheme for Auckland.
Many notable things happened this year in the field that have pushed the boundaries of bike-sharing and transit. And it’s great timing too as global climate change doesn’t seem to want to let the world catch up. These improvements include:
Vcub(e) (Bordeaux, France) pushed the edges of 3rd generation bike-sharing by integrating with the region’s other transit systems such that the same RFID card could be used on any transit system.
Mexico City repealed its bike helmet law before the launch of Ecobici, however, Melbourne did not, which has limited the public’s uptake. Although, Melbourne Bike Share is experimenting with helmet vending machines and helmet sales at convenience stores for which we wish them good luck.
India and Iran got into the bike-sharing game with Bike House and FreMo, respectively, operating modified 2nd generation services. Good for them. This proves there’s no one right answer for each challenge.
Dublinbikes (Dublin, Ireland) is a little service that became so widely used with a whopping 10 trips per bike per day and 100 members per bike. “By comparison Paris has around 8 per bike and Washington, DC around 5 subscribers per bike.”
Barclays Cycle Hire (London, England) launched earlier this year with great fanfare as Barclays provided £25 million to sponsor the service, lending its name and covering the city with 6,000 blue bikes. Their safety and usage videos are to date the best I’ve seen yet. Maybe their next video will have Prince William and Kate narrating.
Velib’ (Paris, France) turned 3 years old this year and hit its 80,000,000th trip. I remember the good old days when it had hit its 1,000,000th trip. Ahhh, memories.
The first large-scale bike-sharing services in the U.S. with the launches of Nice Ride Minnesota (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA), Denver B-cycle (Denver, Colorado, USA), and Capital Bikeshare (Washington, D.C. and Arlington, Virginia, USA). Each trying to out-do the other, the each launched a couple of months from each other with more bikes and stations.
Capital Bikeshare
As you can see, it’s been quite a busy year in the bike-sharing world. Here at The Bike-sharing Blog we had about 80,000 visitors this year and The Bike-sharing World Map has had over 760,000 views since its inception over three years ago. At nearly 300 listings of services which are either running or on their way, the Bike-sharing World Map has gotten a little wieldy as we’re pushing the edges of what a Google Map can do.
We at MetroBike, LLC have had a good year ourselves with the work we’ve accomplished and the many projects were working on. The movement to get people riding is just beginning to roll. There’s still so much to do to change the path the world has been heading down. Bike-sharing, along with many other innovative, green ideas, will be the change the world must see to improve ourselves.
The Bike-sharing Blog co-authors, Russell Meddin of Bike Share Philadelphia and I, wish you a happy and healthy 2011 with lots of bike-sharing. We look forward to the upcoming year and all the exciting things we have yet to learn, experience, and share on The Bike-sharing Blog. We’ll keep you posted, so you keep us posted too about what’s going on in your part of the world.
Best wishes,
The City Council of Dublin, Ireland yesterday approved a tenfold expansion of the Dublin bike-sharing program from 500 to 5,000 bikes, according to the Irishtimes. The wildly successful Dublinbikes is one of the most popular bike-sharing systems in Europe. Many of the current 450 bikes are being used around 10 times a day.image: December 2, 2010 Scholastic Geometry by Mark Dennehy
Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

This morning, after four months of operation for locals, London’s extremely successful Barclays Cycle Hire will be open to users from all around the world. On December 3rd Transport for London (TfL) starts allowing non-United Kingdom residents to hire a "Boris Bikes." A casual user, anyone over 14 years of age, with a Visa or Master Card (American Express need not apply) can now walk up to the kiosk at any station to get a bike. Yes, even Master Cards and Visas issued in the USA will work!
There are easy to follow the instructions available in multiple languages on a large video screen at the kiosk. Pay the £1 fee for 24-hour access with your credit card. Like the similar systems in Montréal, Minneapolis, Melbourne, and Washington, the terminal prints out, on paper, a cycle release code for each cycle. A new release code is needed every time you take out a bike; the system remembers the credit card and at no extra charge within 24 hours issues the new release code for each time. Make sure that your cycle is roadworthy, a seat turned around, is the universal bike-share signal that there is a problem! Compose the cycle release code at the docking point. The light will turn amber while your code is verified, then wait for the green light and then pull out your cycle. Like most systems the first thirty minutes are free, then the next 30 minutes is £1, then the price really escalates. Do not keep it too long because two hours will cost £6 and three hours £15. So make those rides short.
If you come to a station that is full and you can’t return the bike. Use the kiosk to locate the nearest empty docking point and get an extra 15 minutes for free to find it. Although there isn’t a location map on the screen yet, there are good maps on each kiosk. The station location map is on-line here and there are various smart phone applications. On a nice day, many of the 6,000 bikes are in use, especially during rush hour. In the morning they are hard to find near the railways stations and at night those stations are full! TfL is building a 124-docking point station at the Waterloo Railway Station to keep up with the demand which could be the largest station in the world. Because of the success of the system, over 1.8 million usages in 4 months, there are plans, announced in November, to expand the system into the eastern part of the city with another 2,000 bikes by 2012.
According to James Mead, Barclays Cycle Hire Operations Manager, there are over 100,000 UK residents subscribing to the system with RFID “keys” which allows access to the bikes. Around 35% of these are annual members and 60% are daily members. The rest are weekly. He expects these new "casual users" to make up around 10% of the total ridership. Currently, there are around 20,000 trips every weekday made on the Boris Bikes and 10,000 on the weekend days. With these usage numbers and such successful public acceptance of the program, analysts are projecting it is on course to become the only TfL system to make an operating profit, according to the newspaper, The Guardian.
Enjoy your ride in London! By the way you do not need to bank at Barclays to use the Boris Bikes.
Keep in mind that in London you ride a bike on the left! Try to use the green bike lanes or the blue "Barclays Cycle Super Highways" lanes as a reminder on which side of the road to ride. Don't forget, the front brake is on the right and the rear on the left!
Update: According to the Evening Standard, the first day of "casual use" of Barclays Cycle Hire was fraught with computer glitches and bad weather. Many kiosk crashed when implementing the added service. It was necessary for technicians to correct the problems on site by rebooting approximate 100 kiosk of the effected stations. It is operational now.
images: The Bike-sharing Blog
Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org