As early as next week, China will reveal yet another PBS to its growing collection of bike sharing schemes already found in cities such as Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai, among others. The most recent addition will debut in Chengdu, the capital city of the Sichuan province that is home to 11 million people and located roughly 1,000 miles southwest of Beijing. Sichuan Provincial standing committee member Chen Yi states that this is one of several forthcoming initiatives slated to help the Chinese metropolis become a “low carbon city.”
Chengdu has placed bike stations in a “honeycomb” arrangement around heavily frequented areas in the city center, close to transportation hubs, shopping malls, and tourist destinations. The hexagonal shape was chosen such that all stations are equidistant from the city center. Users can access each of them through the use of state ID or other electronic access cards.
Thus far there is no indication as to how Chengdu will handle theft or vandalism of the bikes, theft remaining a persistent problem in China’s cities. How the bikes in particular and the program at large will fare in Sichuan will certainly become clearer over the next couple of months as the program gets underway!
Famous for its scenic beauty, the City of Hangzhou lies in the Yangtze River Delta on the eastern coast of China. The city’s West Lake region is a very popular area for city dwellers and tourists to visit and sight-see. Yet until more recently, Hangzhou had become overpopulated with cars and other motor vehicles, destroying the natural beauty the city had to offer. Every day the city’s streets saw about 460,000 motor vehicles. A decision was needed to be made about City’s street overpopulation problem, and this led the Hangzhou Municipal Government to decide upon a bike sharing system.
Hangzhou’s public bike share system began on May 1, 2008. Starting with thousands of bikes throughout downtown Hangzhou, the program saw immediate success. The initial goal of the system was to solve the “final-kilometer puzzle” (the distance from the public transportation stop to the final destination). Because of this, the city conveniently placed many of the stations close by to public transportation stops. Citizens of Hangzhou, from age 16 to 70 years old, are able to rent and return bicycles with their public transportation card or Hangzhou citizenship card – all it takes is a swipe of the card to unlock the bikes. Tourists interested in renting a bike must put down a deposit of 300 yuan ($44.00 USD). The first hour is free for riders, and users are charged each hour afterwards.
According to the China information website, tourists are the first group to benefit from the system. Why? With the bike sharing system in place tourists are able to travel around the city and the beautiful West Lake area from a new perspective – a bicycle! Liu Zhuo, a tourist from Shanghai, said, “I have traveled to Hangzhou with my family several times before. It was really a headache to find a seat in parking lots in scenic areas. But renting a bicycle has no such problems. We can go wherever we want.”
Citizens of Hangzhou have greatly benefitted from the public bike share system as well. In fact, according to Lu Zhihong, deputy general manager of Hangzhou Public Transportation Corporation, each bicycle was used 0.93 times on average each day in the first few months of operation in 2008. The frequency was raised to 3.27 times in February and about 5 times in March of 2009. This led the city to add 2,400 bicycles and 11 new service outlets in April of 2009. More recently the city has made plans to add more bikes and stations, a goal of 2,000 stations and 50,000 bicycles – which would make Hangzhou’s public bike share system the largest in the world!
The original project’s goal was to solve the “final-kilometer puzzle,” yet now it seems that the projects goal is far greater than that. Just imagine if every city in the world took similar initiatives…
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 3rd 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 3rd 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.
Small Business Commerce Association’s Award Honors the Achievement – View Official Report
SAN FRANSICO, November 7, 2009, CityRyde has been selected for the 2009 Best of Business Award in the Business consulting category by the Small Business Commerce Association (SBCA)
The Small Business Commerce Association (SBCA) is pleased to announce that CityRyde has been selected for the 2009 Best of Business Award in the Business consulting category.
The SBCA 2009 Award Program recognizes the top 5% of small businesses throughout the country. Using consumer feedback, the SBCA identifies companies that we believe have demonstrated what makes small businesses a vital part of the American economy. The selection committee chooses the award winners from nominees based off information taken from monthly surveys administered by the SBCA, a review of consumer rankings, and other consumer reports. Award winners are a valuable asset to their community and exemplify what makes small businesses great.
The 2009 Best of Business Award program consisted of 5 million nominees across all 50 states in 2500 cities. These are businesses that are delighting their customers and providing exceptional goods and/or services. Award winners are chosen from nominees by a selection committee based off information from monthly surveys administered by the SBCA, and review of over 100,000 consumer rankings and other consumer reports.
About Small Business Commerce Association (SBCA)
Small Business Commerce Association (SBCA) is a San Francisco based organization. The SBCA is a private sector entity that aims to provide tactical guidance with many day to day issues that small business owners face. In addition to our main goal of providing a central repository of small business operational advice; we use consumer feedback to identify companies that exemplify what makes small business a vital part of the American economy.
SOURCE: Small Business Commerce Association
CONTACT:
Small Business Commerce Association
Email: Press@SBCAAwards.org
URL: http://www.SBCAAwards.org
To this end, we have decided to provide our readers the following google map which shows every North American city we are aware of that has publicly expressed an interest for a 3rd generation bike share program. By publicly, we mean a city that has either:
Conducted and or begun a Feasibility Study
Released an RFI
Released an RFP
Publicly announced their exploration of the subject
We have omitted the regions of all of our past, present and prospecting clients exploring bike sharing projects in their part of the woods. These details are of course available upon request. We have also excluded Washington, D.C. and Montreal, QC who currently have bike share programs in existence.
This map, updated as of November 6, 2009, includes a total of 26 North American cities:
Seattle, WA
Redmond, WA
Portland, OR
San Francisco, CA
Tucsson, AZ
Albuquerque, NM
Denver, CO
Minneapolis, MN
Chicago, IL
Philadelphia, PA
New York City, NY
Boston, MA
Miami, FL
Mexico City, Mexico
Boulder, CO
Calgary, Canada
Los Angeles, CA
Ottowa, Canada
Vancouver, Canada
Santa Barbara, CA
Willmington, NC
Arlington, VA
Broward County, FL
Santa Clara County, CA
Toronto, Canada
Palo Alto, CA
For high-level details on each location, simply click.
CityRyde has consistently been one of the first stops for people like yourself doing research on the topic of bike sharing which has allowed us to see trends on the most commonly asked questions. We have created a YouTube channel that has very high level answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about bike sharing. This is only our first crack at the video world so please make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel so you can get all of the updates. Below we have a few samples of the videos on our channel:
Recently the city of Philadelphia, where CityRyde is headquartered, experienced a six day long strike by the local transit authority, SEPTA. Subways and buses stopped operating only hours before the Monday morning rush hour leaving workers scrambling for alternative modes of transportation to get to the office. The strike also left many school aged children stranded and unable to attend classes. Even non-transit riders were frustrated with huge increases in vehicular traffic on all of the city’s roads and hiways. During the strike period, bicycle ridership skyrocketed in Philadelphia as it was the only option for many commuters to reach their destinations. The strike forced many residents to view the bicycle as a primary form of transportation.
Paris, France had a similar scenario back in October of 2007 when their transit workers went on strike. However Paris commuters had an option that Philadelphia commuters did not, they have a bike sharing system. Vélib’, one of the largest bike sharing systems in the world, experienced a tremendous increased in ridership during this strike. According to a New York Times article, Vélib’ trips almost doubled to 175,000 trips a day, and this was still before the system was completely installed throughout the city. City officials even installed temporary stations throughout the city to try and curb the demand. Although many Parisians complained that bicycles were not available, they were lucky to have a bike sharing system available to them when the city was paralyzed.
During Philadelphia’s transit strike CityRyde had the opportunity to demonstrate to city commuters a fully functional bike sharing system during the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia’s “Bike the Strike” event. (CityRyde would like to send a special thank you to all of the staff members of the Coalition who put together the event and allowed CityRyde to demonstrate along side them.)CityRyde’s CEO and co-founder was quoted in a Philadelphia Inquirer article saying, “Bike sharing has transformed cities around the world, and we’re hoping to do the same thing in Philadelphia.” Besides showing people “there are other options out there,” today’s demo of the idea was timed “to help push it along in the City Hall,” Ericson said.
This is a wake up call to cities all over the world to look into alternative forms of transportation. Bike sharing gives residents and visitors freedom to move throughout cities on an environmental friendly, cost effective bike sharing bicycle.
CityRyde demonstrated the Samba system which is currently deployed in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Special post just in from our experienced Australian Sales Representative, Malcolm Johnstone…
MELBURNIANS woke to the news this morning of radical changes in their public transport system. The much-talked-about bicycle revolution had entered another phase. Soon they learned they would be able to bike-share with the best of them. The State Government announced the awarding of an exciting bike-share contract to a local organisation.
The venerable RACV – the motorists club in Victoria - in combination with savvy US urban-design firm Alta proposed the winning system. The pair will bring expertise and technology from the acclaimed Bixi system in Montreal and combine it with the local know how and marketing might of the well-respected car club.
The Melbourne scheme will follow other schemes worldwide and charge an annual membership fee while allowing the first half-hour of usage to be free. Membership is expected to be around $50 per year and usage fees are expected to escalate from $2-3 for the first half hour to higher amounts for subsequent increments in order to encourage sharing.
The scheme will begin with 600 bikes across 50 hubs in and around the CBD. If successful it could be expanded to inner-city suburbs, taking advantage of Melbourne’s generally flat terrain.
The decision comes at a time when bicycle riding is expanding in Melbourne at an amazing rate. Bikes are booming, as are bike parking facilities, downtown showers, the trend of riding fixed-gear bikes and revamping bikes from the 70s and 80s.
One point of difference with other countries is the requirement that bicycle users wear helmets. The RACV/Alta team have yet to announce certain plans in this area but supplying helmets at retail outlets or for hire have been mentioned.
PHILADELPHIA, PA (October 27, 2009) – Finally, managing a bike share program made easy. CityRyde has prevailed in the bike share industry as subject matter experts since 2007, but today triumphs over their successful release of Spark -- the first off-the-shelf software solution to manage bike sharing implementations with incredible ease. Until now small-scale bike share programs have been haphazardly running their programs using paper forms to manage the tedious and redundant tasks associated with user oversight and program management. Enter Spark, currently touted by the University of Chicago who utilizes the software to manage their bike share program with over 300 users and is cleverly named “ReCycles”.
Jason Meinzer, CityRyde COO and Co-Founder states, “The launch of Spark is a pronounced step for CityRyde that will further our position as the industry leader in providing bike sharing software. Ultimately, Spark will help make more advanced bike share programs proliferate, which is central to our mission.”
Even more exciting -- Spark is only the beginning of CityRyde’s inspirational bike share management software portfolio code-named Oyster. Future software packages currently in development will turn bike share rides into cash by using carbon credits. Oyster will also include functionalities to assist bike share operators manage their fleets safer and more efficiently with preventative maintenance modules and more. CityRyde’s software sets the gold standard sustainable transportation projects worldwide.
Dublinbikes, that bike sharing program operated by JCDecaux in Dublin, Ireland, recently announced that it will be expanding the system due to the huge popularity of the system. Dublinbikes launched about a month, after a long wait, to a huge success. According to the Irish Times, more than 16,000 people have signed up for the bike share program making it the most popular city bike scheme to date in Europe. The average usage time for each bicycles is between 16 and 17 minutes.
As we have seen in many popular systems, users have experienced shortages of bicycles at certain locations and shortages of free spaces to return the bicycles at other stations. This is a growing problem of larger systems as they are difficult to manage. Dublinbikes currently has a fleet of 6 trucks driving around the city trying to balance the demand of bicycles. Currently there are 450 bicycles and 50 stations in Dublin’s center. The deployment is one of the first to offer an iPhone application allowing users to see in real time the locations of bicycles and their availability.
This type of rapid expansion is not new to the bike sharing industry. BIXI, the deployment in Montreal, Canada, was forced to expand to Phase II of the deployment quicker then expected because of high demand.
