When your mother told you to pay close attention to the fine print before signing anything, despite how much you might have moaned and groaned, she couldn’t have been more right. This is particularly true in regard to the District of Columbia’s contract with advertising giant Clear Channel Outdoor. The media empire agreed to fund the deployment of DC’s SmartBike program in exchange for all of the advertising space on the city’s new bus shelters. The result was the late summer 2008 launch of the first third generation bike-share program in the United States with 120 bicycles at 10 stations centrally located throughout the metro area, with planned phases of expansion in the coming months. The catch: Clear Channel assumed it only had to fund the initial deployment. DC officials eager to add more stations given the success of nearly a year’s worth of bike-sharing in the capital now find themselves at a standstill.
This funding dilemma sparks renewed debate over the best means – municipal vs. advertising – to financially support bike-sharing programs in the US as well as abroad. Minimally it should come as a clear warning for cities considering the implementation of bike-sharing programs to explicitly define their contractual arrangements and to assure that both parties are quite literally on the same page; though a seemingly simple task, this mistake is one that the District Department of Transportation reluctantly regrets.
The city, then, is considering scrapping Clear Channel from the program altogether and instead looking to alternative means of funding. A novel proposed suggestion is using $3 million of the city’s monies received from President Obama’s stimulus package to greatly expand SmartBike. Another is bringing on the WMATA, DC’s metro authority. Stations are desperately needed in congested areas outside of where they are now located, where public transportation is equally accessible and could be ideally complemented by bicycles, including but not limited to Capitol Hill, Georgetown, Arlington, and Alexandria. Though a Velib-scale program is perhaps not in the city’s cards, Washington has much to aspire to, as a comparison of station locations between DC and the Paris-based program attests: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=1759
And speaking of Velib, many will recall that that program is funded solely through the advertising revenue of JCDeceaux. Paris and the advertising conglomerate were indeed clearer in their agreement, with the latter agreeing to pay for the program up to its current state (roughly 1,450 stations and 20,000 bicycles), and the former willing to fund anything beyond that, which it has begun to do as Velib expands into the Parisian suburbs.
Other programs, such as Montreal’s BIXI, resort almost entirely to municipal funding. Only 5% of the financial support for the wildly successful Canadian bike-share program comes from Astral Media.
The extent to which city versus advertising-based funding is more stably successful is of course a matter of debate. Contextual considerations are key; Boulder, Colorado, for example, which looks to launch a program in May 2010, imposes strict advertising laws throughout the city that may hinder its ability to receive funding through those means. Velib proves, however, that where allowed, the advertising model can work if properly executed. SmartBike, on the other hand, shows a poor application of that model. Now we must wait for the bureaucracy to catch up with the program’s expansive ideals. In the meantime, add it to the list of Washington’s many mistakes.
Tags: Bike Share, City Ride, CityRide, contract, DC, SmartBike, Washington
