Author: Ramona Goveas

Dublin launched its own Bike Sharing DB last September 09. It now has over 40,000 subscribers to date. It recently came across its 1 millionth rental on the 14th of August, 2010. All this success is achieved in less than a year. Dublin City Council boasts that the program is “the most successful in the world by any measure.” The long three years in making the Dublin Bike Share possible, is really worth the wait today. It is said right “Patience is the key to success”. Their subscription fees are really cheap as compared to most of the Bike sharing programs all around the world. They have two subscriptions a Long Term Hire Card that cost €10 which is approximatelyonly $13 for an entire year and a 3 day ticket that cost €2 which is approximately only $3. ($ amounts may fluctuate as per the exchange rate).The first 30 minutes are free and then fee charges apply. These charges are as low as, for 1 hour it is €0.50 which is $0.63. This is unbelievable. That is why most of the people choose Bike Sharing in Dublin than any other means of transport.

This is perhaps the main component that sets DB from most of the Bike share systems in the world. DB users can also use Bike sharing in Brussels and Lyon operated by JCDecaux. What more can one ask for? Visit another city and travel around for lower rates again. These strong steady bikes help the user reach places, overcoming all traffic. Most of the young college ages students and middle aged workers who presser bike sharing are not only saving a lot for their future but also contributing in the reduction of traffic.

Dublin Bike Share can be described as: The rising success has not only motivated people to use bike sharing more but also DB itself to expand and have more bikes and stations .They are now planning to extend 20 of the stations with more bikes. So the stations right now which accommodate 20 bikes will be expanded to be having 30 bikes. 4 more stations are to be added to the city. The total number of bikes will sum upto 550. This quick success and expansion of DB was only possible because of the response of the commuters and the commuters have responded in turn because of the cheap and availability of bikes.

It’s official.  Nice Ride Minnesota, Bixi and the city of Minneapolis are launching their own bike share program.  This system will be the nation’s first large scale non-profit bike sharing deployment, and this is a pretty big deal in US bike share circles.   The Minneapolis portion of the Twin cities received the necessary key approval by the city council recently, and now it’s safe to say Nice Ride’s dream of having a 3^rd generation bike share system in Minneapolis has been made a reality-the scheme is expected to be available in May 2010.

The pilot system calls for up to 80 solar powered kiosks dispensing up to 1000 bikes.  The kiosks will be centered downtown, uptown, and on the University of Minnesota campus.  According to Nice Ride Minnesota Executive Director, Bill Dossett, the system is designed to promote short rides.  Users can pay an annual fee of $60 ($50 for students) or pay by the ride, and similar to most other 3^rd generation bike share systems, users can unlock bicycles with a key card or credit card.

The project was funded by $1.75 million of the $22 million provided through Minnesota legislation to finance pilot projects that increase non-motorized transportation in Minneapolis and neighboring communities.  The project will also be financed by the $1 million donation from insurance giant Blue Cross Blue Shield, business sponsors, membership fees, and donations from the public.  In fact, CityRyde even contributed to Nice Ride Minnesota earlier in January.

“It’s an enormously huge project,” says Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak.  He hopes the system will entice people to make short trips across downtown for lunch or a meeting, reducing traffic congestion.  Fortunately for Rybak, we think his hope will become a reality judging by past bike share systems success.

As many North American cities are exploring the possibility of bike sharing, Nice Ride’s non-profit model will be of particular interest to the planning committees to see if it can be emulated in other cities.

Such funds are wholeheartedly welcomed by Nice Ride, which will be the first bike-share program of its kind to run exclusively as a non-profit entity.  Nice Ride will require $3.4m to rollout phase 1 of its program and will then need an additional $1.5m annually for upkeep.  So far they are well on their way; other notable financial backers include Bike Walk Twin Cities, a group that funds bicycle and walking projects around the greater Twin Cities metropolitan area, which has donated $1.75m to Nice Ride.  The City of Minneapolis, a founding partner in the Twin Cities Bike Share Project, will contribute $350,000 in start-up funding.

Nice Ride is set to debut in May of 2010, and will deploy 1,000 bikes at 80 kiosks across downtown Minneapolis, the Uptown neighborhood, as well as the University of Minnesota campus.   Many miles of new bike lanes, in addition to other city infrastructure, will be completed by the spring launch date to aid the deployment.  If the first phase f the program proves a success, Nice Ride will consider expansion into St. Paul.  In order to get the wheels rolling, however, the program is working  to release an RFP in the coming weeks so that it can single out a vendor and proceed with its planning.  Learn more about Nice Ride here!

The station at Exchequer Street as of 5/21. Click image for courtesy and additional photos.

The long-awaited Dublin bike share system is finally set to debut mid-September, but not without the controversy that has tainted the program since French advertising giant JCDecaux and the Dublin city council signed contracts nearly three years ago.  The Times newspaper of the UK reports that JCDecaux, the company also responsible for bringing Velib to Paris, is slated to make €63.38m in advertising revenue over 15 years, €9m more than the city council will receive given the recent advertising downturn.

Despite this diversion from the “cost-neutral” nature of the original JCDecaux proposal, deployment will proceed for the early fall.  The advertising company will provide 450 bicycles, painted partly in the city’s official blue color, at 40 bike stations in exchange for advertising space on 72 billboards.  The original deal was for 170 ad units and 500 bikes, but only 72 billboards were granted by the An Bord Pleanala and the An Taisce, Irish boards that worked together to decide on local appeals.  Environmental impact of ad structure erection, nearness to historic buildings, and obstructing road-user views were chief concerns.

Rosita Boland notes in her June Irish Times report that center city Dublin lacks supporting infrastructure for the bike share program – especially dedicated bike lanes – but is curious all the same to see how Dubliners will utilize the system.  Stations will be placed between the Grand and Royal canals, the two waterways that enclose the city.  Bikes will be available from 5:30am to 12:30am under the now traditional subscription and time-use fee structure.

Interestingly, despite JCDecaux’s €9m gain over the city council, the ad company is ultimately responsible for all theft and vandalism, agreeing in the contract to have 450 fully functional bicycles available for use at all times.  Given the thousands of bikes damaged or stolen from the Velib system, Head of Communications for the Dublin city council Michael Sands aptly notes: “we’ll see over time who got the better half of the deal.”  In the meantime, we’re hopeful that Dublin and JCDecaux will work together to prevent such problems à la the preventative maintenance module of Oyster, and that the program will roll off to an immensely successful start come September.

Wheels4Wellnes has drawn sharp criticism from Republican representative Jack Kingston of Georgia, who recently proposed an amendment to slash the program from the fiscal year 2010 budget.  Kingston laments the $200,000 in taxpayer dollars that the program initially cost to purchase the 30 bicycles.  He also complains that the bicycles are made available from only 8am to 5pm, when congressmen should be at work.  Furthermore, he gripes that the House website gives no clear indication of how to sign up for the program, citing his struggle of being re-directed to many offices simply to sign out a bike key.  Kingston argues that the key is in itself a huge problem, forcing congressmen to make two special trips just to use to bike, once for key pickup and once for key drop-off, all by 5pm.  The congressman posted a critical YouTube video outlining his concerns.  Congress has agreed to cut funding by half (to $100,000), and requires that the CAO review the program and transfer funds to other employee benefit programs if it finds that the bikes continue to collect dust.

In all likelihood, Wheels4Wellness will collapse – and rightly so, for a multitude of reasons.  First is the issue of funding.  $200,000 is an overwhelming amount of money for 30 little-used bicycles, averaging roughly $6,700 per bike.  Even the most high-tech bike-share programs spend only $4,000 per bike, and that’s a total average cost factoring in funds for automatic check-in/out kiosks, something that Wheels4Wellness doesn’t have.  Second, the CAO program’s funds are provided by hardworking taxpayers for congressional benefit; where the incentive is to provide that money proves difficult to find, as it is by no means certain that a biking congressman is more productive than a driving or transit-riding one.  Keep in mind, too, that congressional staff are given DC Metro cards as part of their overall benefit package.

The third reason is perhaps the most obvious.  With the SmartBike DC program proving a relative success since its initial rollout phase last summer, why not use those existing infrastructure models and expand to the Hill?  As noted in an earlier post, SmartBike is currently facing a roadblock with Clear Channel regarding the latter’s agreement to provide funding for expansion, yet if that obstacle is cleared, Capitol Hill seems a logical place to start.  However, even pending a lengthy (and arguably inevitable) continuation of this bureaucratic hold-up that is so characteristic of all things Washington, Wheels4Wellness ought to be scrapped.  The 175 users who took advantage of the program can, like Kingston, pay for their own bicycle transportation.  In the meantime Washington should continue to explore SmartBike expansion and other ways to include the whole of the DC biking community, rather than provide yet another taxpayer-funded perk to the isolated congressional lot high on the Hill.

Bikes from Emory University's bike-share program

The university is to bike-sharing what the amusement park is to a roller coaster: a natural platform from which people can most easily enjoy its use.  With extremely limited parking and consistent efforts to maintain pedestrian-friendly communities, universities have begun to embrace bike-sharing in all its forms, from simple honor system programs to high-tech ones with advanced checkout and tracking methods.  Coupled with the general liberal mindedness that characterizes university culture as well as overwhelming efforts to support green campus initiatives, bike-sharing has the potential to revolutionize transportation on campuses large and small.

Programs currently in place vary greatly in terms of size and scope.  Clark University in Worcester, MA offers six bikes to students that have been rebuilt from salvaged parts.  Bikes can be borrowed for the full day, simply by leaving a university ID card at the facility.  St. Xavier University’s bike-share program is fully automated, very much like third generation European programs; all resident students simply swipe their ID card to unlock bikes from a docking station.  Ripon College in Wisconsin and the University of New England have taken a different approach: in an effort to discourage automobile use, free bikes are given to all freshman who choose not to bring a car to campus.  Other programs abound, from Drexel to Emory to NYU to the University of Oregon.

With the exception of high-tech programs like that of St. Xavier, bike-share systems can be organized fairly quickly on college campuses.  Yet the traditional roadblock is one that, not surprisingly, also plagues full-scale city programs: sources of funding.  Of the two major funding models for city-based systems – municipal and advertising – the latter is in most instances wholly unsuitable in the university environment.  Space issues present physical limitations, but moreover, college campuses, unlike public city space, are private settings not meant to be littered with outside advertising.   In varied attempts to hurdle this obstacle, universities have looked to state grants, charitable donations, and, as a last resort, internal funding.  Yet the question begs whether sustainable transit is more important than profit, with some universities charging upwards of $700 for an annual parking permit.  Concerns over the bike-share ROI seem a limiting factor that prohibits the spread of such programs nationwide.

Despite these problems with start-up capital, universities clearly recognize the value of bike-share programs as a sustainable effort to reduce traffic congestion and limited parking on their campuses.  And though many hurdles still need to be cleared – questions of availability to non-university members such as prospective students, staffing issues for preventative bicycle maintenance, problems with bike theft and vandalism, etc. – many colleges are taking proactive efforts to integrate bike-share systems as an alternative transportation option.  In the near future we’re sure to see more technologically advanced programs à la St. Xavier in which many of these concerns are mitigated, and in which bike-sharing’s potential is maximized campus-wide.

One of Portland's bike boxes, part of the city's efforts to avoid bike and car collisions

Portland, OR, considered the second-most bike friendly city in the world is once again in the market for a bike-share system.  Though the city is not new to bike-sharing, it has yet to implement a successful program.  Portland spearheaded the launch of a first generation program in the mid 1990s that ultimately failed, like many others of its kind, due to theft and vandalism.  The city also solicited vendor proposals in its early 2007 RFI for a more technologically-based program, but ultimately decided against the project in the summer of 2008 due to inadequate information and funding concerns.

Now that Portland Mayor Sam Adams’ Chief of Staff Tom Miller is rife with bike-sharing information from Lyon and Stockholm, having explored those respective models on recent business trips, the city is looking for a fresher, more informed exploration of implementing a third- or possibly even fourth-generation system.  Yet Miller admits to unease with proceeding without the most accurate knowledge of current programs worldwide, noting “we’re not yet sure we know what getting it right entails.”  To help further refine its knowledge, Portland has invited all interested vendors to display and present their bike-sharing systems at two separate demonstrations in mid-August.

Lack of information is, however, a problem far more easily rectified than some of the city’s other chief concerns.  Most prominent is the question of expense: where would the millions of dollars required to successfully deploy a manageable number of bicycles come from?  Miller is careful to note the city’s aversion to the advertising model that SmartBike DC and Paris’s Velib have employed: “Our local culture’s distaste for private advertising in the public right of way means our program would likely need to be funded with taxpayer dollars … if we had a funding model that didn’t require public dollars, we know Portlanders would overwhelmingly support a grand bike share experiment and we would likely move quickly.  But with limited public dollars to address daunting public needs we will move carefully on bike share.”  His concern resonates closely with that of Boulder, CO, where strict advertising laws make the DC and Paris model inapplicable.

Though such a gift as Denver received to start its bike-share program – $1M from the Democratic Party as a thank-you for hosting its 2008 national convention – seems unlikely, Portland appears far more organized to strategically consider all facets of a world-class bike-share program, including its funding.  Though it hasn’t off-written the idea of using taxpayer dollars to support its program, such a funding scheme is likely to face opposition, as many Portland bloggers gripe.  But like all carefully delineated business plans, Portland will leave that for now and consider first steps first, concentrating on information acquisition at the August demonstrations.  Public hearings will be scheduled subsequent to the demos, after which time City Council will vote on whether or note it is in the city’s best interests to proceed further.

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.

It appears that the largest bike sharing system in North America, BIXI, is moving to an advertising based model to support their operating costs after partnering with Astral Media Outdoors. According to their website “Astral Media Outdoor is proud to partner with BIXI to create this new green and sustainable urban advertising network. BIXI offers advertisers 200 advertising faces in the heart of the city, with more than 75% located in downtown Montréal.” It is unclear at this time if any of the stations currently have the advertisements in Montreal or if the company is planning to sell the space. CityRyde Co-Founder, Timothy Ericson, will be traveling to Montreal next week to analyze the BIXI system and speak with stakeholders. Check our blog next week for an update on this story.