By Doug McClellan
Bike sharing—the next generation—arrived in the United States on Earth Day, appropriately enough. Colorado officials including Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper joined hundreds of enthusiasts, who set out on bright red bicycles supplied by B-cycle, a system designed by Trek and partners.
Minneapolis’ Nice Ride system started rolling on June 10, using the competing Bixi system, which started in Montreal and is also used in London and Melbourne, Australia.
Chicago started a sm all 100-bike program July 30, while Washington, D.C. and Arlington, Virginia are expected to launch their systems—operated and financed independently but designed to work together—in late September. There’s even a small demonstration project planned for the Hawaiian city of Kailua, Oahu.
Meanwhile, from Boston to Chattanooga, Tennessee, other U.S. cities are scrambling to start competitive bidding processes in hopes of launching systems by next spring.
Why, seemingly all of a sudden, has bike sharing become so popular?
“A year ago when we wanted to do this, vendors weren’t ready to do business,” said Philip Pugliese, Chattanooga’s bicycle coordinator. “Bixi was focused on their own startup and larger projects such as London, and B-cycle wasn’t quite in a position to fulfill our needs. We were waiting for them, and waiting for the technology to catch up.”
Of course, bike sharing isn’t really happening all of a sudden. Many cities have been planning their systems for years, while some have tried earlier versions of bike sharing.
“It’s been brewing for two or three years. The development and launch of major U.S. city bike share systems has taken longer than I imagined and most people imagined it would,” said Tim Blumenthal, executive director of Bikes Belong.
The touchstone for bike share programs, which now number about 200 worldwide, remains the Vélib’ system in Paris. Launched in 2007, Vélib’ boasts some 20,000 bicycles among 1,639 stations.
Vélib’ was underwritten by an outdoor advertising company, JCDecaux, which invested about $140 million to set up the system in exchange for a 10-year contract to put up some 1,600 billboards throughout Paris.
The business model attracted city mayors from around the world, who salivated at the thought of providing a popular city service that they wouldn’t have to pay for.
“The first simple vision was that somehow these bike sharing systems would fall out of the sky and land on the front doorstep of city hall, paid for and ready to go,” Blumenthal said.
That, needless to say, didn’t happen. There were a few exceptions, such as the Washington, D.C. SmartBike program, which has been underwritten by outdoor advertising company Clear Channel Outdoor. But cities discovered that bike share programs require real investment.
BATTLE OF THE B’s
Two systems lead the competition for bike share systems. Bixi, for “bicycle taxi,” is the system created by the Public Bike Company of Montreal. It’s a quasi-governmental agency that is an offshoot of Montreal’s Parking Division.
Best known for the Montreal system, which has grown to 5,000 bikes and 400 stations with an investment of some $28.5 million, Bixi is supplying the system used for the Capital Bikeshare program in Washington, D.C.
“We have to shift the modal share from cars to other means of transportation. We see that everywhere I go across North America,” said Alain Ayotte, president of Bixi. “The car is not king anymore. People want to take back their cities.”
B-cycle, which provided the equipment for the Denver system, is a joint venture of Trek, Humana, a health insurance company, and Crispin Porter and Bogusky, an advertising agency. B-cycle has also been awarded contracts for systems in Broward County, Florida; Des Moines, Iowa; San Antonio, Texas; and the demonstration project in Hawaii.
Bixi and B-cycle provide the hardware—bicycles, docking stations, and the software and backend systems that take credit card payments, keep track of member usage, and generally run the systems. But with the exception of Montreal, neither Bixi nor B-Cycle operate the bike share systems.
“It seems to be an idea whose time has come to the United States,” said Bob Burns, president of B-cycle (and Trek’s general counsel). “We will see where it goes. It’s still very early to tell.”
B-cycle—whose iconic “B” logo was inspired by the “P” logo for parking—typically works with a local nonprofit, like Denver Bike Sharing, or with a local Trek retailer to operate a system.
A Minneapolis nonprofit group operates that city’s Bixi system. For Capital Bikeshare, Bixi has partnered with Alta Bicycle Share, a sister company to Alta Planning and Design, a company that specializes in cycling and pedestrian planning for communities.
The Bixi and B-cycle systems are proprietary, so a community has to choose one or the other. The B-cycle bicycle was, not surprisingly, designed and built by Trek, while Bixi bikes are built by Canadian bikemaker Devinci.
In Miami Beach, Florida, meanwhile, a local company plans to launch a bike share program called Deco Bikes that would be entirely self-funded. The company says it will spread about 1,000 bikes among 100 stations.
“Now that cities are able to hire a bike sharing operator and equipment through a public tender process, it makes it that much easier to do,” said Paul DeMaio, a bike share consultant whose MetroBike, LLC, has helped plan Capital Bikeshare.
“I think the industry has made itself available for entrée to the U.S. market,” DeMaio added. “All these things are finally coming together, and here we are.”
SHYING FROM COMMITMENT
In Denver and Minneapolis, initial results are encouraging but not homeruns. Both cities report that users are wary of monthly or yearly memberships and instead are buying 24-hour memberships. Nice Ride’s Mitch Vars said the Minneapolis system has only about 1,000 longer-term members compared with 17,000 short-term users. He would like to see the system reach some 15,000 30-day or annual members.
“It’s taken a long time for people to get their minds around what bike sharing is,” Vars said. “Everyone thinks about it in terms of a rental agreement with a bike shop. The idea that you can get a subscription which covers you for a year, we’ve found hard to communicate.”
Denver, too, is surprised at the low number of annual memberships compared with “walk-up” riders, said Parry Burnap, executive director of Denver Bike Sharing, who said the ratio is about 20 to 1.
“That’s surprising to us because it’s so much easier to be an annual member with an RFID member card. It’s easier, convenient and it’s cheaper,” Burnap said. The numbers indicate most users are out-of-towners, and locals who use the bikes for recreation.
Still, Denver B-cycle is averaging 500 to 600 rides a day, with heavier use on weekends instead of weekdays.
A BOLD STATEMENT
Perhaps the most watched program is the one preparing to launch this fall in Washington, D.C., and in Arlington, Virginia, directly across the Potomac River. Known as Capital Bikeshare, the program is actually two systems designed to work together as one. The District of Columbia will install 100 stations and about 1,000 bikes, while the Arlington system is 15 stations and more than 100 bikes, officials said. The total cost for the first year is about $6.8 million, according to officials.
Capital Bikeshare will replace the smaller SmartBike D.C. system that has been operated by Clear Channel Outdoors since 2008.
Chris Holben, bicycle program specialist for the District Department of Transportation, said the rental stations would be placed in areas that appeal to both workers and tourists.
One proposed station would sit on White House property, within the security perimeter and accessible only to White House employees. The logistics are still being worked out, Holben said, adding, “There’s a champion within the gates who wants it to happen.”
Because it will operate under the eyes of the nation’s lawmakers, Holben said a successful D.C. bike share program could reverberate across the country and even the world.
TRANSFORMING BOSTON
Boston bike czar Nicole Freedman also wants to make a statement with the launch of that city’s program, which she expects to happen next spring.
“What I hope to do is transform Boston, to be honest. I think this will do it,” said Freedman, a former Olympic cyclist who has been working on the Boston system for three years.
With about $5 million to spend, a Boston bike share program would continue the transformation of that city from one of the nation’s worst for cycling to one of its most progressive.
She credited the city’s mayor, Thomas Menino, for working to transform Boston’s cycling infrastructure with the construction of hundreds of bike racks and the creation of more than 30 miles of bike lanes, starting from zero.
Freedman anticipates launching a system with at least 60 kiosks that will encompass downtown, the Back Bay, the big hospital districts and Allston and Brighton neighborhoods. The system also would incorporate Boston’s many universities.
And although the funding is just for Boston, neighboring cities such as Cambridge—home to MIT and Harvard—could piggyback onto Boston’s system with funding of their own.
STILL UNFOLDING
The mere presence of so many bike share systems is encouraging other cities to consider them. But it will take time to tell how successful these programs will be.
“As people see that it can be done—as they see Denver, and they see Broward County, and they see Chicago and they see Minneapolis, it’s going to be, ‘if they can do it there, why can’t we do it here? Let’s figure out how to do it,’” said B-cycle’s Burns. “But it’s still very early to see how this business is going to unfold in North America.”
