Bike Share is Booming

Last week, the bike share guide was released by the IDTP and lots of buzz online and in the bike world ensued. In the report, a few charts about bike sharing are shown, the first one, above, shows the tipping point that was reached a few years ago, and the massive growth since then. At a scale that shows the recent increase in number of bikes in bike shares, the previous growth basically looks like a flat line. That's how different the past few years have been!

A catalyst has been the launch of Velo'v and Vélib in France, but new bike shares have popped up all over and the number of stations and bikes has steadily climbed, which has helped increase usage, as the chart below shows.

There definitely seems to be a correlation between how many bikes are available and the number of trips, which makes sense. It's all about convenience: Can you find a bike when you need one? Can you drop it off at a station close to where you're going? Do you see many other bikes from the bike share riding around the city (creating social proof)? All these help keep the boom going (for example, bike-sharing in the U.S. expected to reach 37,000 bikes in 2014 (4x more than in 2012!)).

If your city has a bike share and you haven't yet tried it, I encourage you to do so. Bring some newbies with you (friends & family) for a casual ride. It's trying it the first time that is hardest. Once people are familiar with how it works, they're much more likely to ride again.

Via Streetfilms

Bike Share Projected to Grow Even More in 2014

I have written a lot about bike-sharing, and I work at a company now that designs and studies these systems every day. I especially love when it's integrated into a larger multi-modal system (trains, buses, etc). But if you had been there when bike-sharing was born (probably in many places in parallel at different times...), you might not have believed that it would ever work, at least not at the scale that can be found in some cities (Hangzhou in China has about 65,000 bicycles, and Wuhan about 90,000!). That's because, while bikes are relatively low-tech, managing the memberships and stations without getting all your bikes stolen is a pretty high-tech endeavor, and we're still figuring out the best way to do things (no two bike-shares are exactly alike).

It took many iterations before bike-sharing became truly viable:

Bicycle-sharing has come a long way since the 1960s, when 50 white “free bikes” were scattered around Amsterdam, only to be promptly stolen. A second generation of coin-operated bicycles still got nicked. A third generation solved that problem with electronic docking stations and credit-card payments. (source)

And now a fourth-generation is emerging with technologies like mobile solar-powered docking stations, smart software handling the distribution of bikes, more mobiles apps, etc.

Growth in bike-sharing is strong, even in more difficult markets like the U.S.:

According to a study by the Earth Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington, Europe accounts for most of the programs, but Asia has the largest number of shared bicycles, with over 350,000 in China alone. Even in often bike-hostile America, which in 2012 had 21 schemes with 8,500 bicycles, the EPI expects the fleet to more than quadruple by 2014, to 37,000. In London, which has 8,000 shared bikes, another 2,000 will be added later this year. In Paris the Vélib scheme, which opened in 2007, has already racked up 173m journeys. (source)

So if there's a bike-sharing program in your city but you haven't tried it yet, I encourage you to! Go for a ride with family and friends!

If you're curious about bike-sharing around the world, there's a pretty complete list here with number of stations and bikes.

Via The Economist

US Bike Sharing On the Rise

The opening of the San Francisco Bay Area bike share on August 29, 2013, brings the combined fleet of shared bikes in the United States above 18,000, more than a doubling since the start of the year. The United States is now home to 34 modern bike-sharing programs that allow riders to easily make short trips on two wheels without having to own a bicycle. With a number of new programs in the works and planned expansions of existing programs, the U.S. fleet is set to double again by the end of 2014, at which point nearly 37,000 publicly shared bicycles will roll the streets.

The largest bike share in the United States is in New York City, where some 6,000 bicycles are available at 332 stations in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The program opened at the end of May 2013, and in less than 3 months hit 2 million trips. On busy days, each bike gets checked out seven times or more, a remarkably high borrowing rate. The city ultimately hopes to expand the program to other boroughs and grow to 10,000 bikes.The other large bike-sharing debut in 2013 was in Chicago, where 1,500 Divvy bikes now grace the streets. The program hopes to double to 3,000 cycles by the end of the year, ultimately growing to 4,000 strong—reinforcing the city’s efforts to dramatically boost biking. In addition to making shared bikes readily accessible transit, Chicago plans to extend the path and trail network to within a half-mile of all residences.
Before New York and Chicago came on the bike-sharing scene, Washington, DC, held America’s top spot. Its program has grown to over 2,000 bikes, spreading into neighboring communities. Transport planners from cities around the country have made the pilgrimage to Washington to ride one of the cherry-red Capital Bikeshare bikes and see firsthand how the popular program works. Since 2007, biking in the nation’s capital doubled to 3.5 percent of all commuter trips, and bike sharing has made it more convenient to travel the expanding web of marked cycle lanes. Other large bike shares include Nice Ride in Minneapolis and St. Paul (1,550 bikes), Hubway in the Boston area (1,100 bikes), and DecoBike Miami Beach (1,000 bikes). Aspen, Columbus, Fort Worth, and Salt Lake City are among the more than a dozen programs that opened in 2013, joining a list of cities that have enjoyed bike sharing for longer, including Denver, San Antonio, Chattanooga, Madison, and Fort Lauderdale.
On the international scene, the United States is just catching Europe and Asia’s bike-sharing tailwind. Worldwide, more than half a million cycles can be picked up in well over 500 cities in 51 countries. Italy and Spain have the greatest number of programs, while China is home to two thirds of the global shared bike fleet.

New York is the only American city to make it onto the list of the world’s 20 largest bike-sharing programs. In fact, five cities have more shared bikes than the entire U.S. fleet. Four of them are in China, where Wuhan reportedly has some 90,000 shared bikes for its 9 million people. Hangzhou has 69,750 bikes that are well integrated with that city’s mass transit.

The world’s third largest bike share is Vélib’ in Paris, the first large-scale program to gain worldwide attention. Since its 2007 launch, riders have taken 173 million trips. According to the program, one of the nearly 24,000 Vélib’ bikes gets checked out every second of the day. Vélib’ claims to have the highest bike density among the world’s top programs, with one bike available for every 97 city residents.
Within the next year, the U.S. bike-sharing fleet will have caught up with Paris. New entries in Florida could push the country past that mark, with launches expected in Miami (500 bikes, an expansion from Miami Beach), St. Petersburg (300 bikes), and Tampa (300 bikes). Phoenix is also hoping to launch a 500-bike program that will double in size as neighboring cities join in. Rollouts hoped for in 2014 include large offerings in Los Angeles (some 4,000 bikes) and San Diego (1,800 bikes), as well as 500+ bike programs in Portland (Oregon), Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Seattle, along with a number of smaller markets.

The new San Francisco Bay Area scheme is starting out relatively diffuse, with 700 bicycles split between San Francisco and other cities along the 50-mile rail line south to San Jose. Planners note that it ultimately could grow to a network of 10,000 bikes, better allowing rail riders to travel the first and last mile or so of their commute on two wheels. As communities continue to improve their biking infrastructure and as enthusiasm for an efficient, environmentally friendly, healthy, and enjoyable form of transportation grows, bike sharing has a bright future in the United States.

San Francisco Launching Bike Share

Bay Area Bike Share is about to launch in San Francisco, with plans for 700 bikes and 70 stations around San Francisco, Redwood City, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and San Jose. You can get your "founding" membership in advance of the launch by visiting this web page; there are two options, one at $88 for the year and one with a few more perks at $103. If you just want to try it out, you'll be able to get 24-hour or 3-day passes too once the service has launched.

More info on how things work can be found here (it's really simple).

The partnership model for Bay Area Bike Share is quite interesting:

The Bay Area Bike Share is a pilot project in a partnership among local government agencies including the Air District, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, Sam-Trans, Caltrain, the County of San Mateo, the City of Redwood City and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority. The initial pilot phase is estimated to cost approximately $7 million with $1.4 million in funding provided by the Air District, $1.3 million from the local agency partners and $4.29 million from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

In the Bay Area, the transportation sector accounts for more than 50 percent of air pollution overall. Significant emission reductions from the transportation sector will help the Bay Area attain and maintain state and national air quality standards and reduce greenhouse gases.

It's great to see one more bike sharing project launching. All cities of any size could benefit from bike-sharing.

Via Bay Area Bike Share

First Month of Citi Bike In a Cool Interactive Map

The New Yorker and IBM used data from New York City's new bike share, Citi Bike, to create an interactive map that shows how much use the system is getting. They can't track bikes around directly with GPS, but they know when a bike is docked at a certain station, when it's out, and where it ends up being docked again, so that gives a pretty good idea of the ebb and flow of bikes around the city.

You can see the interactive map here.

If you run the recorded timeline from beginning to end, you'll notice some pretty big changes in the usage patterns over time, which is normal for a new service; people have to sign up first and figure out how to integrate the bikes into their transportation routine. It will be interesting to revisit this map in a year to see how much it has changed.

Via New Yorker

Citi Bike Takes the Pain In the Ass Test

I knew that NYC's bike share would come with people complaining and being against it just because it was new. I knew it would eventually become a normal part of NYC life since bike share, after all, is just bicycles...that people share. I consider bike sharing to be city cycling's 'gateway drug', i.e. a super effective method that eases the biking uninitiated into the pleasures and practical value of biking in cities.

Casey Neistat, a creative film maker, decided to see just how good (or bad) Citi BIke are when compared to two of his other daily transport choices - taking taxis, or riding his own bike.

In Neistat's film, taxis come out as the fastest choice (by that we mean a couple of minutes faster) but in terms of their 'pain in the ass' factor, they were the worst. At first, his own bike seemed better than a bike-share bike to Neistat because of the very high level of frustration and time-wasting he experienced going through the steps of checking out a bike at a Citi Bike kiosk.

Once Neistat realized that Citi Bike members can get a key to bypass the on-screen registration process, he pronounced bike share the least 'pain in the ass' method of transport for his own daily commute.

Of course Neistat's assessment is subjective, and his Manhattan commute is relatively short. But the video goes some way in dispelling some of the notions people might have about bike share. While there is still quite a lot of media coverage of Citi Bike's effects on the city's residents (and the inevitable report of an accident involving one of the bikes), something must be working. Look at the stats on early usage:

Average trips per day: 14,200
Total revenue thus far: $3,334,000.00
Duration of average ride: 23 minutes, 36 seconds
Most popular bike stations: Broadway and W. 57th St.; West St. and Chambers St.; 17th St. and Broadway
Citigroup’s sponsorship deal for six years, $41 million

Via: BIKECRUSH

Chicago's Bike Share Program is Ready for Launch

I was in Chicago last week for work and I was in research mode to see their new bikeways, bike station, and see what is happening with their bike-share program. I was happy to see that New York City isn't the only city getting a new bike-sharing program. Chicago is also getting close to launching its Divvy bike-share, with memberships already on sale and the official public opening currently planned for mid to late June.

At first, Divvy will have about 75 stations and about 750 bikes, but it'll keep expanding until it reaches 4,000 bikes and 400 solar-powered locations by the spring of 2014. The city's department of transportation previewed the system last weekend during a Bike the Drive event along Lake Michigan.

Membership is very affordable when compared to pretty much any other way to get around except walking:

Annual memberships cost $75, and members will be issued a personal key to unlock bikes from any Divvy station, officials said. Daily passes, valid for 24-hour periods, are priced at $7. Both allow for unlimited trips up to 30 minutes each. An additional fee will be charged for using a bike for more than a half-hour.

Here's a description of the bikes:

The heavy-duty bikes feature a step-through, one-size-fits-all design; upright handlebars with the gear-changer on the grip and wide, adjustable seats for comfort; hand brakes; a chain guard to protect clothing; and a basket with an elastic cord for storing items. The bikes also will be outfitted with headlights and taillights that illuminate automatically as the bike is pedaled, officials said.

Bike sharing is one of these things that makes so much sense. Almost all cities could benefit from it, from reducing road congestions, to having better air, to healthier citizens, to all of the psychological benefits of biking.

Via Divvy Bike Sharing, Chicago Tribune

Streetfilms Video from NYC Citi Bike

Streetfilms, shot some footage at the Citibike bike-sharing debut in NYC. In their words, it was a "media frenzy", with more journalists present than at any other past bike event in the city. Mayor Bloomberg and NYC DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan gave speeches, but the real star was the bike-sharing system. New York finally joins the rank of cities like Hangzhou, Paris, Montreal, DC,  etc.

Check out this great video:

NYC Citi Bike Soft Launch

New York City's bike share service, Citi Bike, opened today to anyone signed up for the annual membership. Bikes began lining up at stations around the city on Friday night, in preparation for the launch.

Bike stations in the West Village Saturday attracted a number of curious observers.

Day and week passes will be available starting next weekend. The annual membership costs $95.00, a weekly pass will cost $25.00 and a day pass will be $9.95.

NYC Citibike Bike-Share Selling Annual Memberships for $95

It took a while, but New York City's bike-sharing program is finally getting close to launching. Annual memberships for Citibike are now available, and the first 5,000 members will be considered "founding members" and get some perks (though what exactly is still not clear). There are also discounted yearly memberships available for those who qualify (criteria here), and daily and weekly memberships for those who suffer from commitment anxiety.

6,000 bikes are expected to be deployed at 300 stations.

The station map still shows all stations as "planned", but once we reach the launch date in May that should show which are active and become a useful tool. Citibike writes: "The stations are solar-powered and modular to allow for easy installation. Each station consists of a variable number of docking ports for the bikes, plus a touchscreen kiosk for the purchase of Access Passes."

As for the bikes, you can see a photo above: "They feature a step-thru frame that provides a lower center of gravity and ease of access to a wide range of heights. Every bike has three speeds, a bell, front and rear-flashing LED lights and a handy front rack. Plus, the internal hub gears, chain guard and fenders keep you riding clean, confidently and in style." More details about the bikes can be found here.

Because this is the 21st century, Citibike also has a smartphone app that makes finding stations and planning routes easier.

Via Citibike, Bloomberg

Can Bike Share Change LA?

Los Angeles is a sprawling and car-centric city of 3.7 million people (without the metro area). The last American Community Survey (from 2011, compiled by Darren Flusche of the League of American Bicyclists) showed that just 16,101 Angelenos are commuter cyclists. That number is almost what the city of Portland, six times smaller than L.A., has in bike commuters.

The reasons its hard to bike in L.A. are numerous: distances between city segments are great, main arterials streets are fast-moving, and traffic is incredibly dense and relentless.


Recently, however, Los Angeles has made some fairly big efforts to be kinder to cyclists. In 2010 the city passed a bike plan that called for 1,684 miles of planned bicycle lanes. Putting them down was going to require 40 years in total, and millions of dollars. In the two years since the plan was adopted, the LA Department of Transportation has installed 123 miles of new 'bikeways', and is working on adding 200 miles of additional bikeways every five years. LADOT also plans to add 'sharrow' bike icon markings to 22 miles of streets this year. It's fairly easy to put a bike on L.A. Metro buses, though the crankiness of the bus driver varies wildly from route to route.

In addition, the Department of Recreation and Parks hasn't been slouching on adding to L.A.'s off-road paths. One of the most famous starts in the Pacific Palisades and runs along the Pacific Ocean all the way through Santa Monica and Venice, continuing for more than a dozen miles south to Redondo Beach. The San Gabriel River Trail also runs for nearly 40 miles between L.A.'s Azusa foothills and Seal Beach.


And this month Los Angeles should also see the start of a very ambitious bike sharing program. Bike Nation's plan is to eventually have 4,000 bicycles at 400 different stations - if the plan comes to fruition L.A.'s bike share will be even larger than New York City's.

While the flurry of bike works is encouraging, there's no indication yet that it has significantly increased the city's bike commuters. In spite of a very successful series of car-free city street Ciclavia events - the next one happens next weekend on April 21 - , LA just doesn't seem to have a critical mass of riders willing to brave the streets on regular days. Though there is plenty of bike traffic on the beach-front path, the new bike lanes seem sparsely used by cyclists when I visited at the end of March.

It also didn't feel like there's much of a community of cyclists quite yet. When you ride around the streets, other cyclists seem less like friendly allies than like other survivalists just trying to scurry quickly and safely from point A to B. And just as in New York City, in Los Angeles there are so many cars and so much traffic that the bike lanes that do exist end up being frequently used by drivers waiting to pick people up or waiting for parking.

While these downsides are discouraging, Los Angeles has some key features that make it possibly primed for a big time bike revolution. For one, the weather is pretty fantastic - nothing like the cold rain of the Pacific Northwest or the long winter slog cyclists in Minneapolis and other midwestern and East Coast cities face. For another, with traffic so relentless, biking can be a pretty cheap way for Angelenos to reduce their stress and save some money by getting out of their cars, even if only occasionally. The effect on air quality would be pretty welcome, too.

Perhaps bike sharing can really help create that critical mass of cyclists the city really seems to need, and fast, to use the bike lanes instead of letting them become extra idling space for parking-seeking vehicles.

B-Cycle Has Spread to 15 US Cities

Members of the B-Cycle bike-sharing program with an annual membership will now be able to rent bikes in 15 U.S. cities thanks to the 'B-connected' initiative. This is an expansion of a pilot program that started last Spring between Denver and Boulder in Colorado. Apparently it was successful because the participating cities now are:

• Denver, CO
• Boulder, CO
• Madison, WI
• San Antonio, TX
• Houston, TX
• Spartanburg, SC
• Charlotte, NC
• Des Moines, IA
• Kansas City, MO
• Omaha, NE
• Nashville, TN
• Kailua, HI
• Broward County, FL.
• Fort Worth, TX (launching Spring)
• Salt Lake City, UT (launching Spring)

The process for annual members to connect to visiting cities is simple:

1. Bring your B-card and credit card that is linked to your annual membership to another city that is part of the B-connected group.
2. On your first visit to a station in that city, visit the kiosk and select “No” on the screen which asks if you would like to purchase 24-hour Access. Swipe your credit card associated with your account. Accept the user agreement for that city’s system.
3. Voila! – You are ready to ride a B-cycle in that city!
4. All subsequent checkouts in that city can be done using your B-card at the dock, just as you do in your home city.
5. This process will need to be done the first time you visit a new B-connected city.

Here's a video that shows B-Cycle in action:

Scooter-Bike to Debut for French Bike Share

Commuters in a bike sharing scheme debuting in Bordeaux, France are going to get to try a spanking new hybrid between a bike and a scooter. French designer Philippe Starck and automaker Peugeot teamed up to create the Pibal (French for "baby eel"), a retro-stylish, aluminum-framed vehicle that allows users to ride it like a bike when the going's easy, or to propel it by foot like a scooter when traffic's heavy.

Bordeaux's residents were asked to submit ideas for a new kind of bike, in an effort to increase bicycle use in local public transportation. Starck and Peugeot synthesized these elements together to create the crowd-sourced Pibal, which features yellow colouring for increased visibility, and ample storage in its front and rear racks. Starck explains on Dezeen that:

Just like the pibale, undulating and playing with the flow, Pibal is an answer to new urban ergonomics, thanks to a lateral translation which allows oneself to pedal long distances, to scoot in pedestrian areas and to walk next to it, carrying a child or any load on its platform. It only has the beauty of its intelligence, of its honesty, of its durabiliity. Rustic and reliable, it's a new friend dedicated to the future Bordeaux expectations.

If It's Hip It's Here comments that

The [Pibal] is basically a scooter and a bike compacted into one though the Bordelais (citizens of Bordeaux) are happy to have their very own custom-created public bike and no longer need to feel snubbed by metropolises like Paris and Copenhagen who got their own custom-created public bicycles a while ago.

The Pibal does look a bit heavy, and its lack of a top bar probably means the frame will flex a bit more, residents will get to test out the prototype's durability and versatility when the program launches with 300 Pibals in its fleet -- all free to use -- in June of this year.

The Four Generations of Bike Sharing

Today I came across Amit Bhatt’s presentation on Financially Sustainable Public Bike-Sharing at Transforming Transportation 2013, I thought I would share with you the key moments and generations in the history of bike-sharing.

Although it appears like a new trend, bike-sharing dates back to 1965 and has already gone through three generations over the course of the past forty-eight years. The number of cities with bike-sharing has quadrupled in the past five years, with 204 cities today. China’s 27th most populous city, Wuxi, now has 70,000 bikes in its bike-sharing system. Bike-sharing is a great way to get people back on bikes: 84% of the bike-sharing users in Gangzhou, China had never biked in the city before.

First-gen bike-sharing: the “free” bike
The first generation of bike-sharing started in the summer of 1965 in Amsterdam. Amsterdam’s distinct “White Bicycles,” were in free circulation; bikers were supposed to use them for one trip and then leave them unlocked for someone else to use. The White Bicycle Plan was the world’s first demonstration of a bike-sharing program and provided increased mobility to Amsterdam dwellers.

Second-gen bikesharing: coin access at dedicated locking locations
Copenhagen, Denmark introduced the second generation of bike-sharing and brought it to scale with several thousand bikes under the name “Bycykler København.” The introduction of the locking system at specific stations – bikers would use a coin-deposit – answered the need to deter theft and incentivized bicycle return. The system was free since a coin was refunded when you returned the bike.

Third-gen bike-sharing: paid bike-sharing and smart card access
In 1998, Rennes, France, launched “Vélos à la carte,” introducing the third-generation of bike-sharing replacing coin-access with smart card access. The third-generation also started the now popular scheme of 30 minutes of bike use for free. The use of a smart card answered the need for real-time information for the operator, and started the use of technology to assist in re-balancing the bikes between different stations.

Third-gen + bike-sharing: real-time availability and GPS tracking
In 2005, the city of Lyon, France, introduced “Lyon Vélo’v,” with bikes equipped with electronic components allowing for the bike to be identified by the stations, the distance traveled and conditions of the bikes (lights, dynamo, brakes, etc.) to be tracked, and detailed statistics about bike usage collected. Other cities such as Knoxville, Tennessee and San Francisco have also begun introducing electric bikes. This third generation “plus,” signaled the appearance of flexible, clean docking stations, touchscreen kiosks, additional bike re-balancing technologies, as well as the integration of one unique card allowing a user to ride both bikes and public transportation.

Liquid Is the AirBNB of Bike Share

Want to rent a glow-in-the-dark fixie? Just $15 a day in Portland.
I've loved every chance I've gotten to ride a bike in a foreign city - though it isn't always easy. In Amsterdam, where bikes abound, there is a bike sharing program, as there is in Barcelona, Stockholm, Paris, and Berlin - more than 100 European cities. These bike sharing services are geared more toward city residents than tourists, and they can be easy to sign up for, moderately difficult, or downright impossible. Bike sharing is superior to regular bike rental for a couple of reasons - usually the first half-hour of the service is free (once you've purchased some type of nominal membership), and there are more locations for dropping off the bike and then, later on, picking up another one.
Bike sharing has definitely arrived on US shores - Denver has a great service, Washington DC's bike share has become extremely popular, and new programs are planned for cities across the nation, from New York to Portland and points in between.
If for any reason you are away from your hometown, however, and want to find a bike wherever you find yourself, there's a new service that's trying to be the AirBNB of the biking world. First formed in 2011 as Spinlister, the San Francisco-based bike "sharing" service now called Liquid aims to make renting out your bike as easy as renting out your extra room.
As Liquid puts it:

Bike owners still can earn incremental income while meeting people who share an interest (and often a passion) for bikes. Renters still get to rent a great bike at a reasonable price from a friendly local. We’re deeply committed to making this interaction as safe, easy, and downright fun as possible.

Of course, Liquid can't provide the multiple locations that a bike share can, nor does this service offer free short trips. In fact, the prices that people charge for lending you their precious bicycles vary pretty wildly, and aren't significantly cheaper than renting a bike from a storefront bike store.
On the other hand, let's say you are a small family and find yourself at the mercy of distant relatives in the Portland suburb of Hillsboro, and then find yourself further stranded without a car. If you know about Liquid, you can rent a beautiful bakfiets (one child an easy haul) for just 10 bucks a day, or a Surly longtail bike (two kids or a kid and a light adult, no problem) for $20 dollars a day, and easily, two-wheeled freedom is yours.

Aside from providing a great service, Liquid can be a good way to meet people in an unfamiliar city, or, even experience a number of different biking styles in your own backyard. Professional road bikes to fixies to folders are available at Liquid, and the service exists in many, though not all, major U.S. cities. In some places, you can even rent a unicycle.

Bike Share in Barcelona Has Become "Too Successful"

Those that frequently use Barcelona’s public bike sharing Bicing should get their own bike, says Catalonia’s current government. To enforce this idea and with the current crisis as an excuse, the city’s mobility council plans to raise Bicing’s yearly fee by 116% next year, allowing users unlimited service. Since 2007, Bicing managed to turn many Barcelonians into everyday cyclists and changed the city for the better. Now, its users are worried about what will happen to it if it becomes too expensive to use.

Never before (since the arrival of the car) have there been so many cyclists in Barcelona. However, raising its annual fee from 45€ to 97,5€ might put many of the current 150,000 Bicing members off and destroy a system which "serves some 60,000 daily uses", according to La Vanguardia.
The city council wants to reduce the cost of Bicing and hence argues that if you use the system a lot, you should buy your own bicycle. If you plan on using the service less than 50 times a year, you can get a basic membership for 42€, which is still well above the current fee.


In an interview with Pablo León, Joan Vals from the Catalan Bicycle Club (BACC) says that this is a bit like having to get a private car if you use the bus or taxis too often. Apart from BACC, many other organisations and unions reject the fee increase and are worried that Bicing, and many other cyclists with it, will vanish. The new prices would make Bicing the most expensive public bike sharing service in Europe.

Like León explains in El País, there are many other ways to decrease the administration’s cost for public transport (think congestion charge, car parking fees, ad space, etc.), and it seems that paralysing a perfectly well functioning bike sharing system that inspired many other cities to get their own, is not the correct one. In his article León further explains where this is all coming from.
Investments into the Barcelona transport budget are being cut by 45% until 2020. The yearly 18 million euros of maintenance necessary for maintaining Bicing are too much, even if the city’s metro swallows over a billion euros each year. In the same article BACC points out that “public bicycles make ​​an average of 40.000 daily trips and the cost of 1 kilometer is 0,33 cents, slightly less than that of the bus”.

Getting one’s own bicycle is nice but many people in Barcelona prefer not having to deal with maintenance and most of all, theft. If the city worked towards eliminating bicycle theft, maybe more people would get their own bike. Until then, I hope our government realises that bike sharing saves lives and cuts carbon emissions. In an effort to save Bicing, BACC has launched the #SalvemElBicing (let's save Bicing) campaign; join in if you care!

Bike Helmet Debate Bubbles Up Again

New York City is getting a bike sharing system soon, and the bicycle helmet debate raises its ugly head again. Bike share systems and helmets don't play well together; Nobody is going to share helmets, but nobody is going to carry one around all the time either. Elisabeth Rosenthal of the New York Times writes about the problem in To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets. she interviews the experts:

“Pushing helmets really kills cycling and bike-sharing in particular because it promotes a sense of danger that just isn’t justified — in fact, cycling has many health benefits,” says Piet de Jong, a professor in the department of applied finance and actuarial studies at Macquarie University in Sydney. He studied the issue with mathematical modeling, and concludes that the benefits may outweigh the risks by 20 to 1. He adds: “Statistically, if we wear helmets for cycling, maybe we should wear helmets when we climb ladders or get into a bath, because there are lots more injuries during those activities.”

Rosenthal also writes "Before you hit the comment button and tell me that you know someone whose life was probably saved by a bike helmet, I know someone, too." That didn't stop hundreds of people hitting the comment button to call her crazy and irresponsible. But the fact is, it is hard to share helmets, and you are just not going to see people on shared bikes wearing them.

London's Bike Share Usage Animation

Since it was introduced in 2010, the London bike share program has facilitated more than five million two-wheeled journeys throughout the city. It's amazing what can be accomplished with 8,000 bikes and 570 stations!

Not every station is used equally, however. At least, that's the implication of a new analysis of rider data, performed by Jo Wood, a professor of visual analytics at the City University of London. The video, shows five million trips made using the program's share bikes, mapped across time. As the visualization moves forward, less popular routes begin to fade and more popular ones—like those around Hyde Park and to and from King's Cross Street—become more dense, brighter, and more active.
Of course, it's something that must be seen to be understood. That's just the point: Visualizations such as this help city planners make better informed decisions about the program, eventually leading to a more robust, more efficient, service for cycling citizens.

Mexico City's Bike Share is Growing!

Mexico City's Ecobici bike sharing program is set to get bigger. Much bigger! The plan is to increase the number of bikes from the current 1,000 to around 4,000 over the next few weeks. The target numbers are:

Stations: From 90 to 275
Bikes: From 1,000 to 4,000
Annual Subscribers: From 30,000 to 73,000

"Membership is limited to annual subscribers, so tourists cannot use it. On top of that, the system has a member limit, which until now was 30,000 (sold out). The new member limit will be 73,000, eventually increasing to 100,000."

It would be great if they opened it up to tourists too, but it's a very good step forward.

Via Streetsblog

Bike Share How to Guide

The Federal Highway Administration (FHA) has done something really cool, and released a kind of 'how to' guide for cities who are considering setting up a bike-sharing program. It's a fantastic idea and I must give kudos to all those involved! The best way for bike-sharing to succeed and spread is for the best practices of existing programs to be transmitted to new entrants. Otherwise, if every new bike-share has to reinvent the wheel, progress will be slow and we'll see many failures. But if they can benefit from the collective wisdom and experience of others, we're well on our way.

Here's the guide: Bike Sharing in the United States: State of the Practice and Guide to Implementation (pdf)

If you have any interest in bike-sharing, or if you are a policymaker, I highly recommend that you check it out.

In the words of the authors, the objectives of this guide are to:
• Define bike sharing and provide an overview of the concept.
• Describe the steps a jurisdiction should take to plan, implement, and sustain a bike share program.
• Document existing models of provision, infrastructure considerations, and funding options for successfully implementing a bike sharing program.
• Describe metrics for monitoring and evaluating program success.
• Provide a baseline documentation of existing bike share programs in the United States in 2012.

Via FHA (pdf), Streetsblog