Bicycling
Bike sharing is the newest transit mode
With bike sharing systems popping up all over the world, it's about time we look critically at the role these systems can play in a city's urban fabric and transportation system. While bikes have been an integral part of the modal mix in many cities for years, they served a similar purpose to automobiles, exclusively personal mobility. Bike sharing has altered that paradigm, essentially creating a new mode of public transit.
Photo by richardmasoner on Flickr.
James May, best known for his car loving contributions to BBC's Top Gear, professes his love for cycling in his most recent column in the Telegraph. In the same piece, he considers London's new bike sharing program, Barclays Cycle Hire, praising it for its various merits, but lamenting, among other things:
"[B]y being yoked to the rack system, the bicycle, this ultimate symbol of mobility and freedom for the masses, effectively becomes public transport: it doesn't leave from precisely where you are and doesn't arrive at exactly where you want to be. Unless you work as a bicycle rack attendant, the very point of the bicycle is somewhat defeated."
The key part of his statement is the first sentence. May says that under a bike sharing scheme "the bicycle... effectively becomes public transport." But to frame this negatively, as he does, is a mistake. This is precisely the greatest characteristic of these growing programs: they are a new part of the public transit portfolio.
Personal bicycles suffer from the same downfall that personal automobiles do: they spend most of their time parked, unoccupied and unused. Cities around the world have recognized this as bike racks, sign posts, fences and every other imaginable object narrow enough to accommodate a lock are overwhelmed with bikes, many of which have been abandoned by their owners and subsequently stripped of any utility by thieves and scavengers.
An abundance of vehicles languishing unused results in a massive loss of efficiency, both in wasted resources and income, and is precisely the problem that bike sharing seeks to address. If I only need a bike for 20 minutes, why shouldn't anyone else be able to use it after that time, as long as I have access to one when I need it again?
Yes, there are some inconveniences to bike sharing vis-à-vis using your personal bike, but, with a large, dense, and well distributed system, these are minor. Instead, residents get most of the benefits of cycling along with many of the benefits of the public transit, meanwhile avoiding several downsides to both. Users can forgo the cost of bike ownership and responsibilities and concerns that go with it but eliminate the time loss that comes with waiting for a bus or train.
As more and more cities add programs, it is important to more concretely define bike sharing as a mode of public transportation. This can have several impacts:
In the U.S. much of the federal aid money available to cities and states for transportation can only be spent on capital and operating expenses of public transit. The Federal Transit Administration, a division of the US Department of Transportation, awarded $3 million to Boston for a regional bike sharing program under a recent Livability grant competition but this award was made under a discretionary where the administration has somewhat more flexibility in project eligibility. Defining bike sharing clearly as a form of public transit will open up new moneys for state and local governments to spend on such systems.
Acceptance of bike sharing as a public transit mode will also help it to be considered more seriously by cities looking to expand their transit services. Cities around the world are cash-strapped, leading many to a lose-lose dilemma of higher quality service covering a smaller portion of the population versus lower quality service covering a larger portion. One of the beauties of bike sharing as public transit is that it is indescribably cheap.
The most basic clean-diesel 40 foot transit bus costs upwards of $350,000 and carries a maximum load of around 70 people for a cost of $5000 per passenger capacity. This estimate is very conservative, since many agencies now opt for more expensive hybrid or compressed natural gas buses. Rail rolling stock is more expensive per passenger capacity. The highest quality bike share bicycles, such as the ones manufactured by Public Bike System (BIXI) and used in cities like Washington, D.C. and Montreal, cost about $2,000 apiece.
Certainly bike share systems incur operating costs, but these are relatively small compared to other modes. And while the start-up capital costs are rather high, as bike share systems proliferate and expand, these costs will continue to fall (DC has already identified its replacement cost at $1000 per bike). With new concepts like the Social Bicycle System (SoBi), which allows users to find and unlock bikes using a mobile phone, there is clear opportunity to reduce capital costs of bike sharing even further.
Even at current costs, bike sharing systems offer a significantly cheaper solution to the first-mile/last-mile dilemma that faces many cities looking to build subway, light rail or BRT systems. Feeder buses are notoriously inefficient both operationally and environmentally. Well-placed bike sharing networks can more efficiently complement trunk-line transit services.
This point cannot be overstated. With appropriate station densities and sizes, cities can create hub-and-spoke style systems centered around prominent bus stops, rail station or multimodal centers. At suburban stations, if a bikeshare system can replace the need for even one parking space in the park-and-ride lot, it would probably be a worthwhile investment and possible even financially beneficial, particularly for systems which provide parking for free.
In DC, defining bike sharing as public transit could speed the eventual inclusion of bike share stations on National Park Service lands. GSI, the current NPS concessionaire for bike rentals has the "right of first refusal for any new or additional [rental] services." GSI, when asked, declined to distinguish the difference between point-to-point bike sharing systems like CaBi and the time-based rentals that they currently offer. If bike sharing is clearly defined in public opinion, and perhaps even in statute, as public transit, this distinction would be clear and issue of first refusal could perhaps be circumvented altogether. Certainly, an NPS concessionaire wouldn't have the right to refuse a new Metro station on Park Service property.
While bike sharing faces challenges in many American cities, as the Transport Politic's Yonah Freemark described, because of the propensity of segregated, single-use activity centers, this issue is far less prominent in cities in the developing world. Still, developing world cities may struggle to balance universal availability of a system against the gate-keeping devices which current cities have in place to deter vandalism and theft. Is it reasonable to expect poor residents of Delhi to have a credit card with which to secure a deposit for a lost or stolen bike? Probably not. But the spread of mobile phones and their increasing use in the developing world for banking and payments, may offer future solutions to these problems.
As Freemark has also discussed, there are certain prerequisites for a bike sharing system to be highly successful. This is indeed true, as Washington, DC is learning first hand in replacing its marginally successful SmartBike program with the order-of-magnitude-larger Capital Bikeshare. The new program already has twice the subscribers and four times the daily rides that SmartBike did Of course bike sharing, like any other transit mode, can be done well or it can be done poorly. Obviously, we should prefer well-executed systems. But a light rail line that is poorly designed and attracts low ridership is still considered public transit. Thus we shouldn't allow the debate about what design elements make bike sharing most successful to distract us from the a more important fact: that this debate is ultimately one of transit planning, not recreational planning or vending market research.
One way or another, the introduction of bike sharing along with the revival of bicycling as a legitimate mode of transportation can have nothing but positive effects on the transport sector. After all, bicycling is possibly the most efficient and sustainable transport mode we have. As May so elegantly puts it:The bicycle might just be the greatest of all inventions. [It] mobilises nations, … [is] the lever pulled right back on the great derailleur of transport life, and a means of getting around that will survive Armageddon.
Crossposted at TheCityFix.
Erik Weber has been living car-free in the District since 2009. Hailing from the home of the nation's first Urban Growth Boundary, Erik has been interested in transit since spending summers in Germany as a kid where he rode as many buses, trains and streetcars as he could find. Views expressed here are Erik's alone. 
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On a serious note, maybe more of this area will become bicycle-centric in the near future? (There was already talk on this blog about pedestrianizing streets around Verizon Center)
by kidincredible on Oct 27, 2010 9:56 am • link • report
In any case, to the merits here, I don't have any problems with moving "Bike sharing" into a "transit" category for funding and jurisdictional fights.
However, I do think the economics are very different.
At any one time, the number of people using a bike is very low. Take London or Montreal. Right now, according to that wonderful map, it is 200 or 400 people. That is what, one rail car or several buses?
Sure, bikes cost less, but they do a lot less too.
I see the benefits on bike sharing in three ways:
1. Opening up new corridors. Having BS available, for instance, made me aware of using 20 and 21 to get up and down from West End to Dupont. How simple!
2. Subsidizing young single people. We need more of them. Without health care and children, they are the most desirable residents you can have. Packing more of them into cities, and giving up cars (more people, less car) brings a lot of benefits, and the cost of BS is very cheap compared to bringing them in.
3. Bringing more women into the biking world.
by charlie on Oct 27, 2010 10:08 am • link • report
by Buzzinski on Oct 27, 2010 10:32 am • link • report
"Users can forgo the cost of bike ownership and responsibilities and concerns that go with it but eliminate the time loss that comes with waiting for a bus or train."
Love the concept but the utility of the system depends strongly on proximity of stations to one's origin and destination as well as bike/space availability respectively - in making the modal choice users are trading off one form uncertainty against another.
And here's a thought that only occurred to me in today's rain: since these share bikes are always stored and used out in the elements, will they depreciate faster then their privately owned counterparts? A shorter service life will impact both capital and operating costs.
by intermodal commuter on Oct 27, 2010 10:41 am • link • report
by Phil Lepanto on Oct 27, 2010 10:45 am • link • report
As a potential occasional user, I find the separate fee structure and especially the annual membership prohibitive. I'd be happy to pay for the first half hour as long as I did not need an annual membership.
by Jasper on Oct 27, 2010 10:48 am • link • report
by Simon on Oct 27, 2010 10:51 am • link • report
Our perceptions of the utility of bike share will always be shaped by where we live. If you live in the sprawling suburbs, after all, if you have to walk 15 minutes to *get* to a bike-share rack, you've defeated the point. In that context, James May's critique is valid.
But if you live in a dense- to moderately-dense environment (e.g. Capitol Hill, or Del Ray, or Bethesda), the incredible benefits become obvious immediately. Heck, it usually takes longer to find a parking space and walk to your final destination than it does to walk to the nearest bike-share rack. And more and more people are choosing to live in these configurations.
by oboe on Oct 27, 2010 10:53 am • link • report
by Reid on Oct 27, 2010 10:56 am • link • report
What happens if you find yourself in Adams-Morgan, and you need to get to 14th and P? You could walk in about 20 minutes. You could call a cab. You could wait for a bus.
You're probably not going to be able to whistle and have your bike come and pick you up, though.
by oboe on Oct 27, 2010 10:56 am • link • report
I have a bike and have been using bikeshare as well. It's nice to be able to grab a bike and go meet people, without having to worry about where we might go from there and how I'll bring my bike along wherever we might go. It's also helpful if I'm already out somewhere without my bike and want to get home quickly.
by MLD on Oct 27, 2010 11:13 am • link • report
You can buy a membership by the day (five bucks)
@Reid:
I've used the system in Munich. It works well. The bikes are http://www.flickr.com/photos/14629221@N00/4840492682/#/photos/14629221@N00/4840492682/lightbox/">really great. The best part is being able to drop it off wherever you want, although some people "drop them off" in hidden areas, like a backyard or alley way, so they can use them whenever they want. But generally speaking, people are good about placing them at the nearest intersection as a courtesy. As far as finding one when you need them, the DB collects some of them periodically and drops them off in central areas. That is the biggest weakness though. Unlike CaBi, I do not know for sure that a DB bike will be waiting for me at 14th and U, or wherever.
All in all, I prefer the DB system to CaBi, mainly because there aren't enough stations in DC (yet!), but also because the bikes are more useful (bigger cargo areas, more nimble, etc.). However, I am far more concerned about theft in DC than in Munich. There is nothing stopping you from taking a locked DB bike and throwing it off a bridge. CaBi is a better system, but I like DB more.
by JTS on Oct 27, 2010 11:28 am • link • report
by charlie on Oct 27, 2010 11:28 am • link • report
by Lisa on Oct 27, 2010 11:32 am • link • report
The three big reasons I got a CaBi membership instead of buying a bike:
1. No worries about where to keep the bike when not in use. My apartment is very small, and I'd have to sacrifice either an entire bookshelf or my balcony to make room for a bike. My apartment building has a bike room, but there's a waiting list for spaces.
2. No worries that someone will steal, strip, or vandalize the bike while it's parked. It could still happen, notwithstanding that Bixis are designed to make this difficult, but if some jerk goes after a bike in the racks I'll just take a different one without losing any time. If someone rips up my bike while it's locked to a lamppost, I've got no bike until it's repaired or replaced.
3. Riding a bike in one direction doesn't create a commitment to getting it back again. I can ride a bike to Biergarten Haus, have some drinks, decide against bicycling back home, and take a cab instead. If I did that with my own bike, I'd have to make a separate trip to H Street (without, of course, the aid of my bike), just to reclaim the bike for future use. I can switch to riding Metro without worrying about time restrictions.
Also, I don't think a used bike would cost a *lot* less. A used bike can be found for less than $50, but not a whole lot less -- I don't think you could get it down to a whole lot less without someone paying you to take a fully functional bicycle off their hands -- and, since the first half hour on CaBi is free, the $50 annual fee is pretty much the entire cost.
Obviously, these reasons don't apply to everyone -- plenty of people have different lifestyles than I do, and may have more free space but need to take lots of bicycle trips lasting more than half an hour, for example. And that's fine, of course. But for people who live like I do, CaBi can make sense.
by cminus on Oct 27, 2010 12:00 pm • link • report
Now bike sharing only works in densely populated areas where replenishment happens by itself. Otherwise the cost of moving bikes for full stations to empty stations becomes astronomical. that's why bike sharing will not work in suburbs. Feeder buses are therefore meant to stay. Also there is weather factor to take into account. Bike sharing will only be attractive if the weather is ok!
by Vincent Flament on Oct 27, 2010 12:03 pm • link • report
4) If you're out somewhere without your bike, you can grab one and ride to your destination. Too many folks focus on the round-trip, or *outbound* one-way scenario. But if you've ever been somewhere without your bike, and needed to get home, you obviously haven't got the option of taking your bike.
If this happens 10 times in a year, when you'd otherwise take a cab, you've more than made up the yearly membership fee.
by oboe on Oct 27, 2010 12:08 pm • link • report
At very select locations, which is not helpful when standing one of the many CaBi stations that lack a sales point.
by Jasper on Oct 27, 2010 12:11 pm • link • report
Feeder buses won't work in extremely rural areas. And you can't go skiing in the tropics.
Also there is weather factor to take into account...
Obviously, folks would rather ride a bike in pleasant weather, just as they'd rather walk, or wait for a bus in pleasant weather. But so long as it's not heavily raining, and there's no standing water (CaBi bikes have fenders); and the weather's over, say, 45 degrees, the weather's shouldn't be a huge factor.
Even in the cold, I'd rather ride a bike for 5 minutes than walk for 15 or 20.
by oboe on Oct 27, 2010 12:13 pm • link • report
At very select locations, which is not helpful when standing one of the many CaBi stations that lack a sales point.
Weird, is there a list of stations that have/don't have a credit card reader? Every one I've been to seemed to have one. (Granted I haven't been using the system long).
by oboe on Oct 27, 2010 12:15 pm • link • report
No. From the site:
Go to any Capital Bikeshare station and follow the directions at the kiosk. Use a credit card to join for the day. You can take a bike as many times as you'd like for 24-hours. Just swipe your credit card at any kiosk.
by JTS on Oct 27, 2010 12:17 pm • link • report
If we want to install bike stations primarily for use by tourists, I think that would be even further evidence that the system runs afoul of GSI's contract with the Park Service, regardless of whether CaBi is classified as "public transit."
by Adam L on Oct 27, 2010 12:28 pm • link • report
by David C on Oct 27, 2010 12:34 pm • link • report
by Jasper on Oct 27, 2010 12:39 pm • link • report
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=7295
Not only shows you where locations are, but tells you how far, how many bikes, and how many empty "bays". The biggest drawback to the system as far as I can see is the problem of empty racks, or, for that matter *full* racks.
Having the ability (and peace-of-mind) to plan ahead is huge.
by oboe on Oct 27, 2010 12:51 pm • link • report
by David C on Oct 27, 2010 12:52 pm • link • report
I also think there's a benefit of having multiple stations on the mall for two tourist-related reasons:
1. Tourists are not on the typical commuter schedule, so encouraging them to use bikes (not just on the Mall, but in getting to other sites, like Eastern Market, the White House, Gallery Place, the Zoo) can increase the circulation of bikes in the system.
2. Having multiple stations along the 5-block wide stretch of the Mall helps to close a big gap in the station map, which is good both for riders looking to switch bikes and for having an available stock nearby for the "re-apportionment" staff of CaBi to manage flow.
by Jacques on Oct 27, 2010 12:57 pm • link • report
That said, we should certainly target tourist heavy areas, for the exact same reason it's important to provide good bus and metro connections to those places: it improves the mobility of all the city's residents and visitors. Secondly, the more visitors we have buying $5/day CaBi membership, the more fiscally sustainable the system becomes. After all, London's Cyclehire is already expected to cover its costs in the first 3 years.
by Erik Weber on Oct 27, 2010 1:02 pm • link • report
But they are qualified as tourist vending. Metro is a federal project, and I'm sure that an act of Congress overrides any contract with a vendor of the NPS. The Circulator, however, does run into problems with GSI's contract. It's the reason why tourist loop line is limited to the opposite side of the road from the Mall. If the Circulator runs afoul of GSI, I can be pretty sure that CaBi does as well. The 30-minute restriction is only a problem if people are joyriding the whole day, but if people start to use the bikes from site to site as a way to avoid the outrageously priced Tourmobile, then I am sure GSI would oppose it.
But on the whole, I agree, getting more visitors to use the system would be ideal, I'm just not sure it's possible on NPS land.
by Adam L on Oct 27, 2010 1:31 pm • link • report
by cminus on Oct 27, 2010 1:31 pm • link • report
5) At any given time, oboe's road bike has a flat tire.
:)
by oboe on Oct 27, 2010 1:33 pm • link • report
Fiat Panda.
Never trust a man who gets paid to cover automobiles, and has gas bought for him, to cover transportation policy.
by KadeKo on Oct 27, 2010 3:47 pm • link • report
I'm down w/ this thinking to a certain extent -- why not? And if it helps get funding, even better. It still sounds a bit odd to me, referring to bicycle transport as being part of 'public transit,' which has a very strong 'motorized' and, in America, 'sucks bad' connotation.
'public transit' is not generally something you _want_ to take in America -- it's something you _have_ to take, so adding bike sharing to the 'public transit' definition could really change that. instead of 'public transit' connoting 'a bus trip i had to take to get somewhere I had to go', it could become 'a bike trip i wanted to take...just because'.
One of the beauties of bike sharing as public transit is that it is indescribably cheap.
I'm down with this to a certain extent, too, but i'm very wary of promoting cycling alone or mainly because "it's SO CHEAP" because, eventually, Republicans will get a hold of that, figure out that a quality public bike share system needs $5 million a year to run correctly, and then try to make sure it's gutted to only $2.5 million. we need high quality public transport -- be it bike, rail, etc.
the 'single-use activity centers' problem (of downtown/core/financial districts) is something that I hope begins to melt away, but i'm not sure how realistic that is. right now, too many 'good' people are all amped up about building more and higher buildings/skyscrapers, which are inherently inefficient. and the builders want office towers, not residential housing, and they have plenty of reason$$$ to want to build up and higher-density. these monstrously-sized buildings stress the public transport systems that don't have bikes, and the ones that do, as mentioned. congestion pricing is helping, thankfully, but we need more multi-centric city planning, and it'd help if we limited building heights (DC may have an advantage here -- like Paris and Barcelona -- though, I'm dubious as to how big a problem this one-way crowding really is -- congestion pricing for bike share, here we come. I know the Paris program gives credit bumps to folks who ride up hills to drop their bikes off -- that's a nice price incentive.).
i think the Mall concessionaire situation is interesting -- i'd tried to talk Bike 'n Roll into rolling out bike sharing in SF, implying that they might just lose their market one day if they didn't.
2. Subsidizing young single people.
this one is tricky. first, how much are drivers subsidized? then, how much are non-drivers subsidized? so, bike-sharing would seem to be subsidizing young single people (and, really, everyone) less than usual (which was one of the points of this post).
will [these public bikes] depreciate faster then their privately owned counterparts? A shorter service life will impact both capital and operating costs.
yes, and those costs are known, and built-in (if sometimes overly optimistic). public bikes are generally built to be 'sturdy', but a rental is still a rental -- it'll get worked overtime, beat up, hacked, etc. but it'll also be generally better maintained, etc.
If you live in the sprawling suburbs, after all, if you have to walk 15 minutes to *get* to a bike-share rack, you've defeated the point.
i think a lot of potential difficulties are solvable. for instance, if you bike-share a bike from an 'outer' station (say, Vienna, or really, anywhere I guess), there could be an 'overnight' option that you pay for as part of your subscription. why not? you effectively take the bike out of service overnight, leave it at your house, and/or do whatever you want with it until the next morning when you check it back in to go back to work. i think it could still be worth your while to do this instead of owning your own bike. but, of course, owning your own bike is always an option, too -- more space in the burbs for storage, anyways.
Amsterdam did (white) bike sharing in 68, but gave it up when they all got stolen/vandalized, apparently -- that was before credit cards and computers. Why didn't they try it again yet?
And Freemark suggests that Paris didn't put bikes at La Defense possibly because it was too 'single-use' and would experience problems. I'd be curious to know if that is the actual reason why they didn't go there yet.
And, bike sharing systems could charge more for one-way trips -- if there's an associated cost with it, and it appears there is, then charge appropriately for it. Airlines do it. Car rental companies do it. I'm sure some bike rental companies do it. Why not bike sharing operators, too?
by Peter Smith on Oct 27, 2010 8:19 pm • link • report
Also there is the fact that I find riding a bike just much more pleasant than any other mode. It's faster than walking. You get the option of see the streets/buildings/people like on a bus or in a car. Granted you're susceptible to the weather/geography but just as much as a pedestrian and since I don't live in the city once I get into DC I'm usually on my feet the whole time anyway.
by Canaan on Oct 27, 2010 11:11 pm • link • report
by Schwinn on Oct 28, 2010 11:40 am • link • report
by Peter Smith on Oct 28, 2010 6:23 pm • link • report
by JJJJ on Oct 28, 2010 7:44 pm • link • report
by Read Scott Martin on Nov 7, 2010 8:58 am • link • report
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