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Bicycle-sharing system

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White bicycles for free use, in Hoge Veluwe national park, the Netherlands.

A bicycle sharing system (also known as: Community bicycle program, Yellow bicycle programs, White bicycle programs, public bike or free bike) is an increasingly popular system whereby bicycles are made available on a large scale in a city allowing people to have ready access to these public bikes rather than rely on their own bikes. Municipal governments and community groups have promoted bicycle sharing systems as part of intermodal transportation by allowing people to shift easily from transit to bicycle and back again. By making alternatives to motorized travel easily accessible, they hope to reduce the carbon footprint of commuting as well as enable residents to become healthier through exercise.

Bicycle sharing systems can be divided into two general categories: community bike programs organized mostly by local community groups or non-profit organizations; and large scale public bike programs that are implemented by municipalities or through a public-private partnership as in the case of Paris' Vélib’ program. The central concept of many of the systems is free or affordable access to bicycles for city transport in order to reduce the use of automobiles for short trips inside the city thereby diminishing traffic congestion, noise and air-pollution. A secondary goal is to reduce thefts of privately owned bicycles.[1]

Types

Although users of such systems generally pay to use vehicles not their own, that is they rent bicycles, sharing systems may differ from traditional bike rental. Some are seen as a distinct break, having grown out of free community bicycle programs. Most require a user to become a member, and do not cater to tourists, shoppers, or other casual users. Most of the systems have bicycles available at unattended urban locations; and they operate in a manner that could be seen as "bicycle transit".[2] Most bicycle sharing systems have been undertake by community groups, public agencies or by public-private partnerships. In these regards they resemble carsharing.

There are many ways to provide community bicycles, but most programs are loosely based around one of the following designs:

Unregulated

In this type of program the bicycles are simply released into a city or given area. In some cases, such as a university campus, the bicycles are only designated for use within certain boundaries. Users are expected to leave the bike unlocked in a public area once they reach their destination.

Bicycle sharing programs without user electronic identification struggle against theft and vandalism. In one program tried in 1993 in Cambridge, United Kingdom, the overwhelming majority of the fleet of 300 bicycles were stolen, and the program was abandoned.[3]

Deposit

A small cash deposit releases the bike from a locked terminal and can only be retrieved by returning it to another. Since the deposit (usually one or more coins) is a fraction of the bike's cost, this does little to deter theft.

Membership

In this version of the program, bicycles are kept either at volunteer-run hubs or at self-service terminals throughout the city. Individuals registered with the program identify themselves with their membership card (or a smart card, via cell phone, etc) at any of the hubs to check out a bicycle for a short period of time, usually less than two hours. In many schemes the first half hour is free. The individual is responsible for the bike until it is returned to another hub.

Public-private partnership

Vélo'v in Lyon
Bicing in Barcelona.
SmartBike DC rental site in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

Many of the membership programs are being operated through public-private partnerships. Several European cities, including the French cities of Lyon and Paris as well as London, Barcelona and Stockholm, have signed contracts with private advertising agencies (JCDecaux in Lyon and Paris, Clear Channel in Barcelona) that supply the city with thousands of bicycles free of charge (or for a minor fee). In return, the agencies are allowed to advertise both on the bikes themselves and in other select locations in the city. These programs also prevent theft by requiring users to purchase subscriptions with a credit card or debit card (this option requiring a large, temporary deposit) and by equipping the bike with complex anti-theft and bike maintenance sensors. If the bike is not returned within the subscription period, or returned with significant damage, the bike sharing operator withdraws money from the user's credit card account.

Long-term checkout

These bicycles may be given free of charge, for a refundable deposit, or sold at a reduced price. They are assigned to one person who will typically keep the bike for months or years and lock it between uses. Disadvantage of this model is the much lower using frequency, around three uses per day as compared to between 10 to 15 uses per day in a bike sharing.

Advantages of long term use, or the Library Bike model, include a familiarity the rider gets with their bicycle, a mode of travel that is ready for the borrower at any time during the months of use. The bicycle can be checked out like a library book, a liability waiver can be collected at check out, and the bike can be returned anytime. A Library Bike in a person's possession can be chosen for some trips instead of a car, thus lowering car usage. This model requires less repair as the users tend to care for the bikes as their own.

Partnership with railway sector

In a national-level programme which combines a typical rental system with several of the above system types, a passenger railway operator or infrastructure manager partners with a national cycling organisation and others to create a system closely connected with public transport. These programs allow usually for a longer rental time of up to 24 or 48 hours and as well for tourist and round trips. See OV Fiets for more information (in Dutch with English summary) or Call a Bike in Germany .

In some German cities, the national rail company Deutsche Bahn offers a convenient bike rental service: "Call a Bike". The Call a Bike principle is very simple, the bikes are locked electronically and again left in the open at widely distributed locations. After initial online registration, a potential user can phone a number printed on the bike. He then receives a number code that opens the lock. If desired, billing can be done directly to the users mobile phone account. The more recent Stuttgart operation requires bikes to be returned to defined locations as the users' choice of places to leave bikes off-hire can occasionally provide an opportunity to 'hide' a bike for a return trip. Bikes are also being locked to the Velib stands in Paris because no system can yet offer the option of reserving a bike for a return journey, and balancing flows can give problems as at Montmartre where special measures are needed to get bikes back to hire points at the top of the hill.

Partnership with car park operators

Some car park operators such as Vinci Park in France lend bikes to their customers who park a car.[4]

History

Helsinki city bikes
Stockholm City Bikes, Sweden.
bicisanti, Valencia, Spain.
OYBike, London, UK.

The earliest community bicycle program, or at least the most legendary, was started in the 1960s by Luud Schimmelpenninck in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. This so-called White Bicycle Plan provided free bicycles that were supposed to be used for one trip and then left for someone else. Within a month, most of the bikes had been stolen and the rest were found in nearby canals.[5] The program is still active in some parts of the Netherlands and other places like Helsinki and Copenhagen. It originally existed as one in a series of White Plans proposed in the street magazine produced by the anarchist group PROVO.

In 2000 Schimmelpenninck admitted that "the Sixties experiment never existed in the way people believe", that "no more than about ten bikes" had been put out on the street "as a suggestion of the bigger idea", but the police confiscated the bicycles within a day.[6]

In 1974 the French city of La Rochelle launched a free bike program featuring yellow bicycles that were free to take and use. It is regarded as one of the first successful bike sharing programs.

One of the first community bicycle projects in the United States was started in Portland, Oregon in 1994 by civic and environmental activists Tom O'Keefe, Joe Keating and Steve Gunther. It took the approach of simply releasing a number of bicycles to the streets for unrestricted use. Portland's Yellow Bike Project was an amazing publicity success, but proved unsustainable initially due to theft and vandalism of the bicycles. The program was later revised to operate under a more restrictive system. Since then many community projects around the country have attempted similar models and met with varying degrees of success.

Madison, WI, for instance, had a program where specific bicycles, always painted red, were available for the use of anyone coming across them on the street (especially used on State Street between the UW campus and the capitol). The only rule regarding their use was that they were always to remain outside and unlocked for any passerby to use. This program (called Red Bikes) has since been modified to include deposits for the bicycle and a lock and is only available from spring (when all snow has melted) to November 30.[4]

A similar program, BikeShare, operated by the Community Bicycle Network (CBN) in Toronto from 2001 to 2006, was North America's most successful community bicycle system. BikeShare was designed to attempt to overcome some of the theft issues by requiring yearly memberships to sign out any of the 150 refurbished bikes locked up at 16 hubs throughout central Toronto. At its height over 400 members could sign out a bike from any hub for up to 3 days. The hubs were located at stores, cafes and community centres where the staff would volunteer their time to sign bikes out and in.[7] The major failing of such more secure community bike programs was that it required a lot of administration, but could only charge users a portion of the overall costs. Over 80% of its operating costs had to be covered through grants as users were unlikely to spend more than $50 per year for a membership. By 2006 CBN was unable to secure enough private and government grants to continue operating BikeShare[8]. BikeShare was very popular and did not have any major problems with theft or loss, but without a secure source of funding it was not possible to operate.

Other bike sharing systems were evolving to reduce the operating overhead as well as find other sources of funding. The first system of this 'generation' was Copenhagen's ByCyklen - City Bikes, launched 1995. This was the first large-scale urban bike share program featuring specially-designed bikes with parts that could not be used on other bikes. Riders pay a refundable deposit at one of 100 special bike stands and have unlimited use of a bike within a specified area.[9] The scheme is funded by commercial sponsors. In return, the bikes carry advertisements, which appear on the bike frame and the solid-disk type wheels. Helsinki has a similar scheme, using bicycles available at over 26 stands for a €2 deposit, which is refundable at any other stand. This model of community bike has spread to many other cities.

The next innovation was to use smart cards. Bikeabout, launched in 1996 by Portsmouth, UK, included cards with magnetic stripes that the students would swipe to sign out a bike. A similar system was set up in Rotterdam. They were not particularly successful, as the number of stations and operating times were seriously limited.

The launch of Velo'v in Lyon, France[5] turned out to be a watershed. An bike unfriendly city prior to the launch of Velo'v in 2005, Lyon saw an increase of 500% in bicycle trips, a quarter of which were due to the bike sharing system.[10] Velo'v introduced a number of innovations that were later copied by Velib and most other systems, including electronic locks, smart cards, telecommunication systems and on board computers.

Current programs

The current popularity of bike sharing is attributed by many to Paris' successful launching in 2007 of Vélib’, a network of 20,000 specially designed bicycles distributed among 1450 stations throughout Paris. Vélib’, in turn, followed Lyon's Vélo'v success and is now considered the largest system of its kind in the world. Bike sharing has spread to many other European cities and is currently enjoying surging popularity in North America. Two of more prominent launches have been a small program started in Washington D.C.[11], and a much larger program, called Bixi, launching in Montreal in the spring of 2009.

Montreal's Bixi program, when it is launched will become North America's largest bike sharing system. Montreal began a limited pilot project of Bixi bike-sharing bicycles in fall 2008.[12] Bixi is an effort to encourage locals and tourists to make use of the city's already well-established network of bike paths[13]. The rental bicycles will be available from depots located throughout the city, where bikes can be rented from automated stations using a credit card.[14] The Public Bike System - as the official municipal entity will be known - estimates that by 2009, 2,400 bicycles will be deployed at 300 depots throughout the metro area. The fee schedule is designed to discourage day-trippers. In 2008 the Bixi program was ranked by Time Magazine as the 19th best invention in their 50 Best Inventions of 2008. [15][16]

Some of the systems use mobile phones to reserve or sign out bikes. In the UK OYBike is delivering small scale operations which may grow to this scale organically at 2 Universities, 3 Business Parks, and 3 London Boroughs (and a Hotel chain in London). Like Berlin's Call-a-Bike, OYBike uses mobile phone technology to log use and charge for hires and can set up hire points in little as 10 minutes. Many of the business users can reclaim the cost of leasing bikes and hire points as part of a workplace cycling scheme or green travel plan. Research also reveals that for many major London rail stations an unknown number of the bikes parked are used only a couple of times per week, and the potential to replace these with hire bikes is widely ignored by UK rail operators.

Other programs:

Operations

Many of the community-run bicycle programs paint each bicycle yellow, white, or another solid colour. This is usually done for two primary reasons. First, as a fleet of coloured bicycles begin to appear around the city, it helps to get the word out about the program. Secondly, many programs paint over the brand name and other distinguishing features of the bicycle, some even going so far as to paint every component such as the pedals, shifters, and wheels. This is helpful in deterring theft since the painted bicycle has little resale value.

Large scale bike sharing programs, however, have designed their own bike with singular designs of frame and other parts to prevent disassembly and resale of stolen parts.

Another advantage of bike sharing systems is that the smart cards allow the bikes can be returned at any station in the system, which facilitates one way rides to work, education or shopping centres. Thus, one bike may take 10-15 rides a day with different users and can be ridden up to 10,000 km (6000 miles) a year ( this figure from the city of Lyon, France). The distance between stations is 300-400 m (1000-1300 feet) in inner city areas.

It was found that to have a major impact —such as in Paris and Copenhagen— there has to be a high density of available bikes. Copenhagen has 2500 bikes which cannot be used outside the 9 km² zone of the city centre (a fine of DKr 1000 applies to any user taking bikes across the canal bridges around the periphery. Since Paris' Velib program operates with an increasing fee past the free first half hour, users have a strong disincentive of taking the bicycles out of the city centre.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Community bicycle programs.

See also

References

  1. ^ 50,000 Rental Bikes For 2008 Beijing Olympics | BikeRadar.com
  2. ^ Bike-sharing blog bicycle sharing definition, Retrieved on February 2, 2009.
  3. ^ Sailing through the lights, riding for a fall | 28 Apr 2007, accessed 26 Nov 2008
  4. ^ VINCI Park : réinventons le stationnement
  5. ^ Shirky, Clay Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (2008.) Penguin. pg 282-283
  6. ^ Moreton, Cole (2000-07-16). "Reportage: The White Bike comes full circle" (Reprint). The Independent. Retrieved 28 December 2008.
  7. ^ BikeShare page
  8. ^ [www.thestar.com/News/article/201282 Toronto Star]
  9. ^ Free City Bike Schemes, Søren B. Jensen, City of Copenhagen, Conference Proceedings, Amsterdam 2000
  10. ^ "The Bike-sharing Phenomenon - The History of Bike-sharing", Paul DeMaio Carbusters Magazine[1] #36, November 2008
  11. ^ City Will Explore Bike-Sharing Program - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog
  12. ^ Erb, Chris (2009-01-31). "Sneak peak of a Bixi bike". Spacing Montreal. Retrieved 2009-02-01.
  13. ^ "Le r seau cyclable montr alais" (in French). Velo Quebec. Retrieved 2007-08-02.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  14. ^ Sherwood Stranieri (2008-07-03). "Montreal's New Bicycle Rental Program". Using Bicycles. Retrieved 2008-07-27.
  15. ^ Treehugger
  16. ^ Time
  17. ^ SmartBike DC official site
  18. ^ Bixi website
  19. ^ OYBike website
  20. ^ http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24772441-2862,00.html
  21. ^ [2]
  22. ^ [3]
  23. ^ Bike Emory Website

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