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

Experiments in Speed with Bicycles

This video is pretty crazy. Experiments in Speed documents how a bike maker makes the fastest bike that he could. The goal is not to beat a world record, but simply to push personal limits. It's a very cool project, and I won't give spoilers on how fast he went. See for yourself:

You can see other bikes built by the same people at Donhou Bicycles.


Via Vimeo, Reddit

Amsterdam Reacts to NY Times Article

A few weeks ago, the New York Times published a piece about bikes in Amsterdam, basically framing things in such a way that the message was more or less "there's too many bikes in Amsterdam, let's not make the same mistake in New York". I covered it, concluding that "The real problem seems to be that infrastructure hasn't kept up with the growth in cycling. [...] The solution is now fewer bikes, but even more bike garages (build them underground if need be), bike racks, bike lanes, etc!"

But the best way to debunk the New York Times' claims is to go to Amsterdam and ask the people who live there what they think. Clarence at StreetFilms did just that for the second video in his Amsterdam series (the first can be found here: Things you might see in Amsterdam, the bike capital of the world...):

It's sad to see so much anti-bike propaganda in the media. Whatever problems there are with bikes, they are smaller than the problems we have with cars, and they are easier to fix. On the other side of the ledger, there are huge benefits (environmentally better, healthier, less expensive, etc). So why pick on bikes?

Via Streetfilms

E-Bikes Are On the Rise

Electric bikes are an extremely environmentally-friendly way to get around, so I'm all for more of them! Regular bikes are even cleaner, but the advantages of e-bikes shouldn't be underestimated; a lot of e-bike riders might not bike nearly as much if they didn't have an electric motor to assist them, because they have a long commute, or they live in a hilly area, or because of some medical condition, or even sheer laziness. The reasons don't matter as much as getting more people biking!

It's good to see that the electric bike industry is growing. It's not going gangbusters or anything, but it is forecast to grow from $8.4 billion in 2013 to $10.8 billion in 2020. China is the main player in that market, with 9 of every 10 e-bicycles being sold going there.

Western Europe’s market is growing increasingly crowded with competitors and now accounts for more than 20% of global e-bicycle revenue annually. Meanwhile, North American players are finding new, younger e-bicycle consumers among those who ride for transportation rather than entertainment. Even the massive 28 million unit Chinese market is in a state of change as the government considers changes to the rules governing the market and consumers begin to recognize the value of lithium ion over lead-acid batteries. Navigant Research forecasts that annual sales of e-bicycles will grow from 31 million in 2013 to nearly 38 million in 2020. (source)

Via Navigant

Rubberized Asphalt In Bikeways

I saw this and I couldn't resist researching it a bit deeper. I also immediately wondered why no one ever thought of this before now. Leave it to the Swedes (who have taken a pledge to reduce traffic deaths to zero, and actually work toward that goal) to create a better material with which to make bike paths safer. At the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), researchers are working on a new form of asphalt that has enough friction to reduce bicyclists' slide-outs, while at the same time it cushions vibrations if a cyclist does fall.

Regular asphalt uses crushed stones and bitumen, a petroleum byproduct, as a binding agent. KTH's researchers are working to blend in just the right amount of recycled tire rubber from old car tires to soften up the mix.

The first step is lab testing, then real-world road tests on areas where there have been frequent bike accidents. The Swedish Traffic Administration is paying special attention to cyclists as one of the transport groups suffering more injuries than car, truck, or public transport riders. About 1,500 cyclists are hospitalized in Sweden with serious injuries each year - a number almost 10% higher than the number of car passengers injured. Another hope is to find a formula for asfalt that also reduces wear and tear on bicycle tires.

Via: Dagens Nyheter