Nation's First Stationless Bike Sharing

I saw this on The City Fix today and is really awesome when you see grassroots programs for bike sharing becoming successful. This is about a small start-up near Washington DC that has started what it calls "the first stationless smart bike sharing program in North America." All it took to get the system started up and running was some bikes, U-locks, and mobile phones.

In the fall of 2007, Allie Armitage and three classmates at the University of Maryland decided to design a campus bikeshare program for their “Systems Thinking” course. Armitage says one team member, Vlad Tchompalov, had just seen the new bikeshare systems in Paris and Berlin and thought they could implement a smaller-scale version on their 37,000-student campus. They figured that a system with stations would be a huge step up from the communal “yellow bike” programs in places like Portland, Ore. that failed because the bikes were left unlocked and most were stolen. But when they approached the university about installing the bikesharing stations, they hit a wall – of bureaucracy.


To install the stations they needed approval from three department heads, and to even get their plans in front of them they had to get the support of everyone working under them. They went to their faculty advisor, Dr. Gerald Suarez, for advice, and he suggested, ‘Well, what if you don’t have stations at all.’ Following the advice from their professor, Armitage, Tchompalov and their classmates Yasha Portnoy and Brad Eisenberg developed software that lets users check out and return communal bikes with text messages – without having to use any sort of station. Operating under the name weBike, the team refurbished 12 bikes with the help of a local youth program. With these bikes they began a pilot program at the University of Maryland campus in September 2009.

How It Worked
The group locked the 12 bikes to various bike racks and posts around campus with standard combination-protected U-locks and then listed the bike locations on the weBike website. To check-out a bike, students texted the bike’s ID number to weBike and weBike generated an automatic text back with the combination to unlock the bike. The students could have the bike for up to 30 minutes before having to lock the bike back to a rack or post at a location on campus and text the bike’s location and ID number to weBike. If the bike wasn’t returned within 30 minutes, weBike’s system would text the user once an hour until the bike was returned. The weBike team would check in on the bikes and make needed repairs (though customers could text “damage” if a bike needed to be fixed) and periodically change the combinations on the locks.

Front Door Service
During the three months that the pilot program ran, more than 50 users logged a total of about 550 rides, or about 6 rides system-wide per day. Only one bike was stolen. Perhaps the best part: weBike only spent $2,000 to develop and run the program.

Despite the relative success of its pilot program, the University of Maryland never put out a bid for a full-scale program. But a student who used the weBike pilot program told Armitage that her apartment building, which is two miles off campus but lies on a bike path, might benefit from a bikeshare. Armitage contacted the Mazza Grandmarc apartments and a few months later, in September 2010, the apartments had 15 new Fuji Crosstown bikes locked to a rack in front of its buildings.

Most of the Mazza Grandmarc’s approximately 600 residents are students and use the bikes to ride to campus or the grocery store. The Mazza Grandmarc owns the 15 bikes and pays weBike a monthly fee to run the texting system that allows users to check out and return bikes. Users have 24 hours to ride the bikes wherever they’d like before they return the bikes to the rack at the Mazza Grandmarc. An apartment employee changes the bike locks’ combinations twice a week and does routine maintenance, like pumping up the tires. A professional mechanic comes to the apartment once a month to do things like align the wheels and make sure the brakes and gears are working properly.

During its first three months of operation, the weBike station at the Mazza Grandmarc had more than 85 users take about 300 rides on the bikes. Two of the bikes went missing for short periods of time, but  were recovered. None of the bikes have been significantly damaged.

According to Armitage, weBike is planning to run a small 7-bike system on a boarding school campus in New Hampshire and has been talking with the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill about starting a system there, as well.

Bumps in the Road
Of course, a system like this does have its drawbacks. If the bikes can be parked anywhere, like in the University of Maryland pilot, then weBike must rely on customers to know where the bikes are located. To check out a bike, users must have the good fortune of spotting a bike or be able to go online. (Armitage did say her team considered installing GPS on the bikes, “but the cost-benefit analysis didn’t work out.”)

And unlike many municipal systems, like those in London and Montreal, weBike does not use special bikes that have limited parts to deter theft and reduce damage. Changing the U-lock combinations is also cumbersome, and users could potentially keep unchanged combinations and use the bikes later without checking them out. WeBike is working on developing its own lock that will automatically generate a new combination after each use.

Easy to Implement
Still, the weBike model has real advantages, especially for small communities and community developers who want to give another service to their residents. The need for little infrastructure is especially appealing: Armitage estimates that weBike’s up-front costs are only 15 percent of that of a station-based system.

“When assuming a cost of $35,000 per station, systems like Capital Bikeshare [in Washington, D.C.] run for around $4,000 per bike in total infrastructure costs,” Armitage explains. “Our station-less system, on the other hand, can be set up for $600 or less per bike.” (Armitage does stress that these are only estimates.)

This is not to say that weBike doesn’t have competition. The New York City-based Social Bicycle System, also known as SoBi, are developing their own prototype of a station-less bikesharing system.

SMS-Based Bikesharing at your Fingertips
The basic concept is the same: bikes are locked to normal bike racks or posts and riders use their mobile phone to reserve a bike. The difference is that SoBi has its own lock and sends users a unique PIN number to unlock the bike. The bikes also have GPS to track their locations. SoBi says it will do a public testing of its system this spring in New York City. Its first full pilot program will be implemented at Indiana University next fall.

Another competitor is viaCycle, based out of Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Ga. Like SoBi, it has developed its own lock and uses GPS to keep track of its bikes. On-board technology is constantly monitoring for maintenance needs or unauthorized use. ViaCycle says that in about a month it will finish its latest prototype and launch a 40-bike pilot at nearby Emory University.

Armitage is aware of these competitors but thinks weBike is a step ahead because “getting on the ground is really critical.” weBike already tested and implemented its system and has a paying client. It has dealt with technical malfunctions (the first day the system was running at the Mazza Grandmarc, a person actually had to sit there and text users,) university bureaucracy, missing bikes and client payment plans. In the real world, having a person to deal with problems like these is just as important as the technology.

New Rearview Camera for Bikes

In my push for greater safety for cyclist, I have come across some interesting innovations in gear and electronics. A new product from Cerevellum called the Hindsight 30 could be the solution for keeping better tabs on cars coming up behind you. Designed by industrial designer Evan Solida after he suffered a run-in with a car in 2007, the rearview video setup is a video system that allows cyclists to see what's behind them, and it includes a "black box" system that will record any accident that might occur.

One might ask why not just use a cheap, light rear view mirror to see cars coming up behind you while you're riding. I've seen, experienced, and heard of some fairly horrifying incidents between drivers and cyclists, both intentional and completely accidental. Something like this camera could help by providing a little more than just a shaky, blurry rear view mirror. By recording any accidents, people can understand when it's the cyclist or when it's the driver who is at fault.

Hindsight 30 has a rearview video camera that mounts to the seat post, a 3.5 inch LCD video screen that mounds to the handle bars, and it is powered by a lithium-ion battery. The screen is transflective, so it can be viewed in direct sunlight. According to Gizmag, there is an even more sophisticated model coming out soon -- the Hindsight 50 will have front and rear cameras, GPS, cyclometer functions and it will continuously record a loop video. However, when its G-sensor detects a sudden shock, like what happens with an accident, it will stop recording after 10 seconds in order to preserve any video of how the accident occurred.

The 30 is expected to be available for purchase in September for $249, while the 50 will go for around $549, depending on the cyclometer options selected.

Facts Don't Lie and Prospect Park Successes Spur More Improvements

My interest in New York's bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure continues, as they proceed in making New York and its surrounding boroughs bike/ped friendly. After living there this summer and experiencing it first hand, I believe that these type of design solutions can be a model for any of our cities. These solutions may not be perfect fits for every scenario, but they do show that they have been successful in the most extreme urban conditions.

The city has released its final findings on the redesign of Prospect Park West [PDF]. With the data showing it a success by most any objective measure, DOT is recommending a few tweaks to further improve the design.
The proposed modifications should make the new Prospect Park West even friendlier to pedestrians. At intersections, the tan paint marking the pedestrian zone of the median will be replaced with raised islands. That should keep parked cars from intruding on pedestrian space. Along the bike path, DOT wants to install “rumble strip” markings to alert riders that they’re approaching an intersection. DOT also suggests rearranging the loading zones at 9th Street and narrowing the bike lane buffer at the very northern end of Prospect Park West in order to better transition into Grand Army Plaza.

Those changes should put the finishing touches on a project that’s shown huge results on the street.

• Under the new design, total traffic crashes are down 16 percent.
• Even more important, crashes that cause injuries are down 63 percent.
• Under the new design, there have been no reported injuries to pedestrians, from either cars or bikes.

Prospect Park West users are so much safer in large part because traffic has been slowed down:

• Before the redesign, three in four drivers traveled over the speed limit. Now, only one in five speeds.
• The average speed on the old Prospect Park West was 33.8 mph. On the new street, the average is 26.6 mph.

But cutting down on speeding doesn’t mean that Prospect Park West is mired in congestion. Just as many drivers can get where they’re going, with little to no impact on travel time:

• The two-lane Prospect Park West carries 7.8 percent more motor vehicles in the morning than the three-lane configuration did. The number of cars on the road in the evening stayed the same.
• It takes essentially the same amount of time to drive the length of Prospect Park West as in the past: a few seconds longer in the morning and a few seconds shorter at midday and in the evening.
• Driving times also dropped by a few seconds on nearby Eighth and Sixth Avenues, though they increased by a few seconds on Seventh Avenue.

While the street continues to serve drivers well, it’s done wonders for cyclists.

• On weekdays, the number of cyclists on the street nearly tripled, jumping 190 percent.
• On weekends, when bike traffic was already higher, the number of cyclists more than doubled, rising 125 percent.
• By serving all those new cyclists, the capacity of Prospect Park West was increased by the redesign. The street now carries 11 percent more commuters during the morning rush and six percent more during the afternoon, counting motor vehicles and bikes.
• The new lane has also empowered cyclists to ride more safely. Whereas before, just under half of all weekday cyclists rode on the sidewalk, now only three percent do so.

The facts don’t lie: the Prospect Park West redesign is keeping people safe, making room for more New Yorkers to get to work, and encouraging cycling.

Job Creation By Creating Bike Lanes

Estimating the Employment Impacts of Pedestrian, Bicycle, and Road Infrastructure
Here are some interesting, and unsurprising, data from a study found via the Infrastructurist: building bike lanes creates twice as many jobs per dollar spent as does fixing roads. It makes sense; it is labour intensive rather than equipment intensive.

The author of the study, Heidi Garrett-Peltier, writes:

Why do the employment impacts differ? Two major sources of variation in project costs cause these differences: labor intensity and the relationship between engineering and construction expenses. First, the labor intensity of the projects varies. That is, some projects are more labor-intensive; a greater proportion of the overall expenses are spent on labor versus materials. More labor-intensive projects will have greater employment impacts. Second, the ratio of engineering costs to construction costs varies across projects. Engineering is a more labor- intensive industry than construction, and therefore has a higher employment multiplier. Projects with higher engineering costs (as a share of total project expenses) will therefore have greater employment impacts than projects with a smaller share of engineering costs. These two sources explain the differences in our job estimates presented above. Projects such as footway repairs and bike lane signing and painting are labor intensive - they use a high ratio of labor to materials in comparison to projects such as road repairs, which spend a greater proportion of their total project budget on materials.

Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't fix our roads, but would make the point that if the purpose of a stimulus program is to create jobs, then the last thing you should be cutting are bike lane projects.

Download the pdf report: Estimating the Employment Impacts of Pedestrian, Bicycle, and Road Infrastructure

Ban Kids From Bikes?!!!

I saw this from A.K. Streeter and felt like I had to share the absurdity of this.

The upsurge in urban cycling in the U.S. has for the most part had positive results for society. Cycling helps keeps fight obesity, reduces stress, and the building of new bike infrastructure has even helped create jobs.
For every positive benefit biking has brought about, however, there's also been inevitable backlash from the forces in society that don't want to share the road.

Oregon's House Representative Mitch Greenlick is proposing a state law (HB 2228) that would make it illegal to transport children under the age of six by bicycle. Greenlick says his bill is justified if the law would save just "one child's life."

Of course it's hard not to have an emotional response when reading about saving (or losing) a child's life. Greenlick has said in press accounts that he based his idea for a bill in part on a recent Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) study that found that of 962 Portland commuter cyclists surveyed, 20% had had a 'traumatic event' (injury of some sort) and 5% had required medical attention for that injury during a year of commuting.

That seems like a lot of injuries. From an interview with one of the doctors involved in the study in the Portland Mercury, here's a closer definition of 'traumatic event':

"You had to actually be injured. It could just be skinning your knee or spraining your ankle, but it couldn't just be a near miss. I think it was surprising. We were expecting fewer injuries." - Dr. John Mayberry

It is interesting that in the OHSU study, riders' skill and experience with riding didn't change the number of injuries or events. The studies authors also concluded that it was the cycling environment, rather than riders' skill, that contributed most to injury events.

As Mia Birk, former bicycle coordinator for the City of Portland who recently published a book (Joyride) about her efforts at improving Portland's cycling infrastructure noted, however, the OHSU study doesn't offer any statistics about cycling injuries to children, only to adult cyclists.

If you look at data for leading causes of death to children aged one through six at the Center for Disease Control database, the top killer is classified as"MV Traffic," numbering 618 fatalities in 2007, the latest data year provided.

For the "Pedal, Cyclist, Other" category, five deaths are recorded. In searching for the largest single cause of injuries to kids under six, the 'unintentional fall' (which theoretically could include falling from a bike) and the 'unintentional stuck by/against' accounted for the vast majority.

While these stats don't give a clear picture of the comparative death/injury risk for children from riding in cars versus riding on bikes (because U.S. children ride so many more miles in cars than they do on bikes) they do clearly show that motor vehicles by far constitute the number one killer.

So in the absence of better data (which is clearly needed), if Greenlick is truly concerned with saving childrens' lives, shouldn't he be outlawing kids riding in cars, too?

Boulder B-Cycle Gets Google Donation

Looks like Google was feeling generous toward Boulder—and toward bike-sharing—this week. The company gave a $25,000 donation to B-cycle "as part of Google's commitment to support innovative ways for using Internet-based technology to reduce environmental impacts and improve the quality of life in the communities where it operates," Boulder B-cycle said in a press release. Google has an office in Boulder that develops revenue platforms for ads and digital online goods, Google Docs, Chrome, and Geographic projects.

Boulder B-cycle executive director Lewis Wolman said the donation will go a long way to help them reach their fundraising goal of $1 million by May. "It's also important validation when a company like Google gets behind a program like ours. We hope other Boulder-area businesses will be inspired to follow suit."

The program is expected to be up and running on May 20 with about 200 bikes at 25 docking stations. It'll work like other B-cycle (and similar bike-sharing) programs around the country—users buy a membership online or a 24-hour pass at any B-cycle station, and they're ready to start renting.

London's Bike Superhighways Are a Proven Success

In other words, London's bike superhighways are incredibly successful, as the front-page GOOD story remarks. According to the findings in study by Transport for London, there were 70% more cyclists out on the streets of London in October of 2010 than there were the previous year.
GOOD has more:

that means that the number of bikers on the streets pre-superhighways was 70 percent lower than it is now that the superhighways have been installed. That's some effective bike promotion, if I've ever seen it ... Will other cities see this information and start doing more for bike lane planning than simply laying them on the side of the street?

That's right -- bike use everywhere jumped, not just on the superhighways. The safe, elegant lanes evidently inspired more folks to dust off their old ten-speeds and hit the roads. It should also be pointed out that the spike in cycling also coincides with London's bike-share program, which I've previously written about.

This development is fantastic -- people want to ride bikes in cities. It's cheap, efficient, and fun. Portland, New York, and DC are also making strides in its bike lanes/trail infrastructure. If they work as well as London's, that's all it will take to push bicycle riding in the US to new heights.