Posts about Capital Bikeshare

The tool looks at the trips in the third quarter of 2012. Click on any station to see what other stations people ride to and from, as lines of varying thickness. Click on any line to see how many trips there were between that pair of stations, and how "unbalanced" the trips are (whether the number of trips in one direction is close to that in the other, or if one direction dominates).

This isn't Jantzen's first interactive tool. He made one earlier this year for Metro ridership patterns. Around the same time, graduate student Rahul Nair made a tool for CaBi that has a lot in common with Jantzen's new one.

What do you notice with the tool?

According to a release on godcgo, DDOT plans to install the first 54 stations from January through March. 24 more sites are slated for a future round of expansion.

The most recent expansion added no stations downtown, and there still remain some large holes, like around the Penn Quarter. The new set includes 2 stations along D Street NW in that area, some around the Capitol, and other sites downtown.

Farther out, there numerous stations along Rhode Island Avenue NE, in Brookland, Columbia Heights, Georgetown, and stations that push the outward envelope in each direction, including eastward in Ward 7, southward in 8, and up in Wards 3 and 4 almost to Missouri Avenue/Military Road, and in Phase 2, beyond to Takoma.

What do you think? Is there one near you? What important holes has this filled and what seems to still be missing?

Update: Corey H has created a nice map showing all of the proposed stations in DC, Arlington, Alexandria, and Montgomery County. This uses a smaller red dot for each existing station, so you can see the proposed ones more clearly.

Purple Line: The Sierra Club says, "The Purple Line is estimated to have 68,000 daily commuters when complete, replacing an enormous amount of automobile traffic, enhancing air quality and decreasing greenhouse gas pollution. ... Construction on this project is will begin in 2015 and the line is scheduled to open in 2020."

If, that is, Maryland can come up with money to get it built. Local leaders and stakeholders are meeting tomorrow for a "Regional Transportation Funding Summit" to talk about how the state can find the necessary money for its share of the project; right now, it has no funding from 2014 on to keep going with the project.

Silver Line: The line has already spurred TOD at Tysons Corner and is projected to displace 91,000 car trips with both phases complete. "The project will also help preserve the rural nature of western Loudoun County by absorbing growth in higher density TOD around the two stations in the eastern part of that County," notes Sierra Club. It can do that best if Virginia doesn't also build the Outer Beltway to generate more sprawl.

Meanwhile, Virginia's highway-building spree, which Governor McDonnell accelerated but Governor Kaine laid plenty of groundwork for, is causing significant damage and warranted 3 dishonorable mentions:

Outer Beltway: "The project has been repeatedly rejected because it doesn't relieve traffic on the overly congested Washington D.C. Beltway, I-95, or I-66. It will induce greater traffic demand by encouraging housing developments, strip malls and office parks along its route in the now rural areas of western Prince William and Loudoun Counties."

Look for the McDonnell administration to try to push this through in the final years of his term; he's promised to find a solution for transportation funding, which to him means only road funding.

Coalfields Expressway: "Located in Southwest Virginia, [this] is a proposed project to construct a new four-lane highway through rural areas of the Appalachian Mountains via mountain top removal coal mining methods." It will pollute the environment and do little for mobility in the lightly-populated area.

Route 460 in Hampton Roads: This $1.5-2 billion project would create a new 4-lane, 55-mile road paralleling an existing one, which will create more sprawl and environnmental damage. Sierra Club writes, "The new parallel highway is intended to serve as a truck corridor for the Port of Virginia, detracting from a less oil-intensive freight rail alternative for the port."

Transit cuts: Another "worst" project is the nationwide cuts to transit, pressure to raise fares, or both that systems around the nation are facing as the federal government, states, and municipalities reduce their investments in transit.

"A survey of 117 transit agencies by the American Public Transit Association in 2011 found that "nearly eight in ten transit agencies (79%) have cut service or raised fares or are considering either of those actions. Half of the transit agencies (51%) have already cut service or raised fares," the report says.

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To be sure, there would be a tradeoff in lost revenue from the lucrative 1-day passes for the additional ridership encouraged by all-you-can-ride weekend memberships. With approximately 100,000, 24-hour memberships sold in the past year at $7 each, over $230K in annual revenue would be put in doubt by the offering of a weekend-only membership. This is assuming approximately 1/3rd of all 24-hour members are local. Moreover, it doesn't even consider the higher-than-average trip lengths, resulting in usage fees, taken by 24-hour members (looks like CaBi can afford it, though).

But there would also be customer service benefits from diverting many casual users from having to interact with the kiosk. One observation by survey collectors from the intercept survey, which is at odds with these survey responses, was their experience with the kiosks. While people reported an OK experience figuring out the kiosk (77% "easy" or "somewhat easy"), we observed a fair bit of confusion, slow processing, some queuing, and a lot of time consumed with having to navigate the screen processes.

Of course, total ridership does dip on the weekends. Incentivizing locals to maximize weekend use of the bikes could grow ridership in a way that does not stress the system at peak times. Additionally, a fee-for-peak ride, at worst, yields some additional revenue for taking rides at the most disruptive times. If service outages (full/empty docks) continue in peak commuting hours, perhaps a variant of this pricing model should be considered for all memberships going forward?

I can see some pros and cons to this approach. This could push more riders toward buying plans that best fit their preferences and possibly drive more weekend use. Or, would it end up discouraging weekday use?

There's a lot of power in simply making something free. It psychologically pushes people to consume more of it while even a small charge has the opposite effect. This is why Metro should encourage more unlimited passes since it has plenty of unused off-peak capacity, as well as why parking in high-demand areas should not be free since overuse leads to more circling and traffic.

Anyone who buys an unlimited Capital Bikeshare membership suddenly has an amazing power: they can grab a bicycle in scores of locations with no guilt at all. That's a powerful incentive to bike more, become more confident riding in the city, and ultimately start riding a personal bike instead for many trips.

Capital Bikeshare's goal is not merely to match up supply and demand. It also achieves far broader goals of helping people become comfortable bicycling. Would this system boost that effect or hinder it?

Any system of off-peak rides won't precisely fit with the excess capacity. Some areas don't experience much dockblocking. In the middle of the day, even on weekdays, the system isn't that busy. This pricing system could discourage rides in those areas where we'd most want to foster new riders and more usage.

On the other hand, there are segments of the public who might not be customers under the current pricing systems. I actually might not renew my Capital Bikeshare annual membership the next time it comes up for renewal. I've only used it on 2 separate days in the last 8 months. That's not because it was not useful, but because I became accustomed enough to riding my own bike that I almost always use it instead. I don't have to walk a few blocks on each end when I use my own bike. (A station near Archives would cut down on that extra walk quite a lot!)

I could pay $7 for a day pass in the occasional situation I need a one-way trip, but that's a lot for a short trip, and it's time-consuming to use the kiosks. Also, now that it's in Alexandria, where I periodically go, it might become extra useful for trips between Metro and North Old Town. Buck's plan might better meet my needs. Or maybe without it I'll just pay the $75, though I'm more willing to spend money on bicycle programs than the average person.

What do you think? Is this a good idea or a bad one?

Columbia Heights resident Jack Santucci was biking on a Logan Circle street last year when a woman in a parked car opened her door, giving him no time to do anything but smash right into it.

Though D.C. rules require drivers to look before opening doors, the woman blamed Santucci. He should not be biking on the street, she told him, incorrectly.

"There's a lack of awareness of the rules," Santucci said. "That's just the adjustment for the change in the city. People need to get used to the presence of bikes on the road, and people on bikes need to get used to the idea that there are cars in the road, too."

Essley then quotes a driver complaining about cyclists and someone else complaining about people on Capital Bikeshare, but closes with a quote from Shane Farthing of WABA about how drivers could benefit from some education as well.

A pull-out box lists some rules of the road, including responsibilities for both cyclists and drivers, and Essley also has a companion piece about how many drivers are making illegal U-turns on the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes (though I think the story and some of the people quoted are confusing Pennsylvania Avenue NW, which has the center bike lanes, and Pennsylvania Avenue SE, which does not).

DC media, I implore you—beef up your Metro reporting so that the Examiner isn't the main source of actual information, and hire Essley, Kytja Weir, and other hardworking reporters so that they can tell us the news somewhere other than the hate-mongering Examiner.

While the story is fair to both sides, these stories about how one group is angry at another can so easily become divisive. Alex Baca wrote sarcastically on Twitter, "OF COURSE all cyclists think all drivers are the problem, and OF COURSE all drivers think cyclists are the problem. Yep. That's it." And then, more seriously, "I find assholes—ped, driver, cyclist—(I have at some point been an asshole on all of the above and you likely have, too)—to be the problem."

Geoff Hatchard observed, "People of DC—I've figured everything out! We should all hate each other and anyone who is not just like us, and it sells papers." Sadly, it probably does, especially when the papers are free.

But this is no laughing matter. Topher Matthews noted, "You know what's funny, seeing the Examiner print a hilariously awful anti-bike headline the day after two drivers almost killed me." Actual road safety is rarely a part of these stories on bike crashes, traffic cameras and more.

In fact, the numbers in the story point out that safety increased. Michael Perkins pointed out that the numbers show "a 39% increase in bicycle crashes compared to an 86% increase in bicycle commuting." In other words, all of this stuff is helping people get around with less risk of being hurt. Isn't that important, too?

Bike sharing is expanding so quickly in this country that some of the report's information is already out of date. For example, their information for Capital Bikeshare is from February, before dozens of new stations were added. Also, the report oddly leaves out a few cities with sizable networks, such as Madison.

Nevertheless, it's interesting information. Capital Bikeshare is really blowing away the other cities by this metric, although it's not exactly a fair comparison for the systems that haven't had as long to mature, or that close during winter.

Notice that when the information was gathered for this report, Capital Bikeshare had temporarily slipped to second place according to the number of bikes available. Presumably it's back in first by now with this year's expansions on the streets, although when New York launches this coming spring, we can expect to drop from the top permanently.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.