Fwd: Earth Policy Release - Bike-Sharing Programs Hit the Streets in Over 500 Cities Worldwide

[Vivienne Armentrout]

FYI. You know our own Erica Briggs is involved in a bike share program
in Ann Arbor.

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Subject: Earth Policy Release - Bike-Sharing Programs Hit the Streets
in Over 500 Cities Worldwide
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:22:52 -0400
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*Bike-Sharing Programs Hit the Streets in Over 500 Cities Worldwide *

Janet Larsen

http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2013/update112



Earth Policy Release
Plan B Update
April 25, 2013


Politicians, lobbyists, and tourists alike can ride bicycles along a
specially marked lane between the White House and the U.S. Capitol, part
of the 115 miles of bicycle lanes and paths that now crisscross
Washington, DC. In Copenhagen, commuters can ride to work following a
“green wave” of signal lights timed for bikers. Residents in China’s
“happiest city,” Hangzhou, can move easily from public transit onto
physically separated bike tracks that have been carved out of the vast
majority of roadways. And on any given Sunday in Mexico City, some
15,000 cyclists join together on a circuit of major thoroughfares closed
to motorized traffic. What is even more exciting is that in each of
these locations, people can jump right into cycling without even owning
a bicycle. Welcome to the era of the Bike Share.

Cyclists have long entreated drivers to “share the road.” Now what is
being shared is not only the road but the bicycle itself.
Forward-thinking cities are turning back to the humble bicycle as a way
to enhance mobility, alleviate automotive congestion, reduce air
pollution, boost health, support local businesses, and attract more
young people. Bike-sharing systems—distributed networks of public
bicycles used for short trips—that integrate into robust transit
networks are being embraced by a growing number of people in the
urbanizing world who are starting to view car ownership as more of a
hassle than a rite of passage.

Today more than 500 cities in 49 countries host advanced bike-sharing
programs, with a combined fleet of over 500,000 bicycles. Urban
transport advisor Peter Midgley notes that “bike sharing has experienced
the fastest growth of any mode of transport in the history of the
planet.” It certainly has come a long way since 1965, when 50 bicycles
were painted white and scattered around Amsterdam for anyone to pick up
and use free of charge. Unfortunately, many of those bikes quickly
disappeared or were damaged. In the 1990s, several Danish cities began
more formal systems, with designated racks and coin deposits to check
out bicycles. Copenhagen’s famed Bycyklen (“City Bike”) program, which
has been an inspiration to many cities, finally closed at the end of
2012 after operating for 17 years with more than 1,000 bicycles. It is
set to be replaced by a modern system in 2013, which could help
Copenhagen meet its goal of increasing the share of commuting trips on
bike from an already impressive 36 percent to 50 percent.

Graph on Number of Countries with Bike-Sharing Programs, January 2000 to
April 2013

Modern bike-sharing systems have greatly reduced the theft and vandalism
that hindered earlier programs by using easily identified specialty
bicycles with unique parts that would have little value to a thief, by
monitoring the cycles’ locations with radio frequency or GPS, and by
requiring credit card payment or smart-card-based membership in order to
check out bikes. In most systems, after paying a daily, weekly, monthly,
or annual membership fee, riders can pick up a bicycle locked to a
well-marked bike rack or electronic docking station for a short ride
(typically an hour or less) at no additional cost and return it to any
station within the system. Riding longer than the program’s specified
amount of time generally incurs additional fees to maximize the number
of bikes available.

Although the Netherlands and Denmark had far more pervasive cycling
cultures, it was France that ushered the world into the third generation
of bike sharing in 1998, when advertising company Clear Channel began
the world’s first public computerized program with 200 bikes in the city
of Rennes. The country moved into the big leagues in 2005 when Lyon,
France’s third largest city, opened its Vélo’v program with 1,500 bikes
at some 100 automated self-service docking stations. Its success—an
apparent 44 percent increase in bicycle ridership in the first
year—paved the way for large-scale bike sharing’s early shining star:
the Vélib’ in Paris.

Vélib’ was launched in 2007 with 10,000 bicycles at 750 stations, and it
quickly doubled in size. By the end of 2012, Vélib’, which is funded in
a 10-year contract with advertising firm JCDecaux in exchange for
street-side ad space, could claim more than 224,000 annual members and
had surpassed 130 million trips. Since the system’s launch, the number
of cyclists on the streets has risen 41 percent, with more than one out
of every three bicycles on Paris streets being a shared bike. With bikes
accounting for just 3 percent of traffic, though, there is still room
for growth, and that is the plan. Bike sharing is part of a broader
initiative to reduce automotive traffic and pollution in Paris, which
includes closing prominent streets to cars on weekends, reducing speed
limits, marking dedicated bus lanes to help move people en masse more
efficiently, and extending the bike lanes network to 430 miles (700
kilometers) by 2014—all championed by Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, who
has said
<http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/07/the-bicycle-revolution-in-paris-five-years-later/>
that “automobiles no longer have a place in the big cities of our times.”

Meanwhile, programs were popping up throughout Italy and Spain like
mushrooms after a rainfall. According to figures maintained by
<http://www.globalcitizen.net/topic_1164_Bicycles/knowledge_papers_39272_Bicycle-Sharing%20Schemes:%20Enhancing%20Sustainable%20Mobility%20in%20Urban%20Areas/>
Peter Midgley, Italy had 47 bike-sharing programs in 2007, Spain had 36,
and France had 18. Many were smaller scale, with tens of bikes rather
than thousands. But a few stand out. Spain’s signature program in
Barcelona became so popular soon after its launch in 2007—getting many
new riders to try bike commuting for the first time—that by 2008 it had
quadrupled its fleet to 6,000 bikes and planned extensions to the
surrounding communities. Seville also began bike sharing in 2007 as part
of a rapid transformation to make the central city more accommodating to
people, not just cars. In less than 5 years, cycling leapt from close to
nothing to cover 6 percent of trips. As of late 2012, Spain leads the
world with 132 separate bike-share programs. Italy has 104, and France,
37. With a wave of new openings in 2009 and 2010, Germany joined the
group of leading countries and now has 43 programs, including some with
stationless bikes that can be located and accessed by mobile phone. (See
data <http://www.earthpolicy.org/datacenter/xls/update112_all.xlsx>.)

Other European countries have fewer programs, but some are very
active. Dublin’s 550-bike system boasts a high membership and frequent
rides on each bike. London’s Barclays Cycle Hire system launched in 2010
with 6,000 bikes and has grown beyond 8,000. As part of Mayor Boris
Johnson’s “cycling revolution,” London is introducing several new cycle
paths and “superhighways” in hopes of doubling the number of cycling
trips within the next decade. In the Netherlands, a different breed of
bike sharing run by the national railroad makes some 5,000 bikes
available at more than 240 rail stations and other popular commuting
spots. In Eastern Europe, which appears to be on the brink of a
bike-sharing bonanza, Warsaw opened a program in August 2012 with 1,000
bikes that were ridden 130,000 times in that first month. The city now
has some 2,500 shared bikes.

Bike-sharing enthusiasm has spread to Eastern Asia, Australia, and the
Americas as well. Russell Meddin, who along with Paul DeMaio has
chronicled <http://bike-sharing.blogspot.com/> and mapped
<http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&om=1&msa=0&msid=104227318304000014160.00043d80f9456b3416ced&ll=43.580391,-42.890625&spn=143.80149,154.6875&z=1&source=embed>
the world’s bike-sharing programs, reports that even Dubai launched a
program in February 2013.

Graph on Bike-Sharing Programs by Region, 2000-2012

In the Americas, where the car has long been king, the first big
third-generation bike-sharing program opened in Montreal in 2009. It now
has 5,120 bicycles and over 400 stations, facilitating use of the city’s
robust network of bike lanes and paths. Toronto plans to expand its
1,000-bike scheme, and Vancouver and Calgary, along with several other
Canadian cities, are expecting to start programs in the next couple of
years.

When Mexico City launched its Ecobici program with some 1,000 bikes in
2010, it quickly reached its limit of 30,000 annual members and started
a waiting list of eager would-be cyclists. The program has since
quadrupled in size and remains the largest of Latin America’s dozen or
so programs. Most of these are in Brazil; in fact, São Paulo even hosts
multiple bike-sharing ventures. In Argentina, Buenos Aires opened a
pilot program in 2010 and currently has 1,200 shared-bikes, allowing
more two-wheelers to brave the traffic, even crossing what is known as
the world’s widest street. Santiago, Chile, currently has a program
operating with 180 bikes at 18 manned stations in one city neighborhood,
but later this year plans to roll out a larger automated system that
could grow to 3,000 bikes at 300 stations within four years.

Throughout the United States bike-sharing programs are springing up at a
fast clip; in fact it is hard to find a sizable U.S. city that is not at
least exploring the bike-sharing option. As of April 2013, there were 26
active modern public programs in the United States, a number poised to
double within the next year or two.

The largest U.S. program in early 2013 was Capital Bikeshare, with more
than 1,800 bicycles spread across 200 stations in Washington, DC, and
neighboring communities. Nice Ride Minnesota, which covers the Twin
Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, was second, with 1,550 bikes at 170
stations. The Boston metropolitan area is home to 1,100 shared bikes.
Miami Beach is planning to add 500 bikes to its current fleet of 1,000
as it extends into Miami this year. And Denver, which is looking to grow
from near 500 to 700 bikes in 2013, is one of more than 15 public
systems in the B-cycle family that give members access to bikes when
they travel to different cities, including Madison, Fort Worth, Fort
Lauderdale, San Antonio, Charlotte, and Kansas City.

Several of the new players coming online in 2013 will dwarf the existing
American field. New York’s highly anticipated Citi Bike program is
poised to roll out 5,500 bicycles at 293 stations in Manhattan and
Brooklyn in May, with the ultimate goal of reaching 10,000 bikes.
Chicago plans to start in June, ramping up to 4,000 bikes at 400
stations in 2014. Southern California will be rolling into bike sharing
in a big way with programs opening in Los Angeles (4,000 cycles), Long
Beach (2,500), and San Diego (1,800). In northern California, a pilot
project of up to 1,000 bikes in San Francisco and Bay Area cities south
along the rail line hopes to begin what could ultimately be a
10,000-bike program.

Impressive as these additions are, they are hard-pressed to hold a
candle to some of Asia’s massive developments. According to
<http://trb.metapress.com/content/92836574u717n007/?genre=article&id=doi%3a10.3141%2f2143-20>
Susan Shaheen and colleagues at the University of California at
Berkeley, Asia got into the game in 1999 with a program in Singapore
that lasted until 2007. The city now has two bike-sharing systems: one
conventional and one run by a car-sharing company offering electric
bikes. South Korea rolled out six programs between 2008 and 2010,
including one in Changwon that now has 4,600 bikes and one in Goyang
with 3,000. Japan, where commuters have a long history of using bikes to
get to train stations (witness the 2.1 million bicycle parking spaces in
the Greater Tokyo metropolitan area), has nine bike-sharing programs
that began between 2009 and 2012. Taiwan, a high grossing bicycle
exporter, has two bike-sharing programs as well. But it is the
“bicycle kingdom” of China that is showing the world how big bike
sharing can get.

In early 2013, China was home to 79 bike-sharing programs, with a
whopping combined fleet of some 358,000 bicycles. According to a paper
prepared in late 2012 for the Transportation Research Board’s 92nd
Annual Meeting by Yang Tang and colleagues at Tongji University,
expansions and new projects could soon balloon China’s public bike fleet
to just under 1 million cycles.

Graph on Number of Bicycles in Bike-Sharing Programs by Region, 2000-2012

The world’s largest bike-sharing program is in Wuhan, China’s sixth
largest city, with 9 million people and 90,000 shared bikes. Wuhan
recently claimed the number one spot from Hangzhou, which has 69,750
bikes in its bike-share scheme. Hangzhou launched mainland China’s first
computerized bike-share system in 2008, integrating stations with bus
and subway networks, allowing the same transit card to be used across
all modes and granting extra free bike riding time with a bus transfer.
By 2020 Hangzhou’s system could grow to 175,000 bikes.

The growth in bike sharing and bike infrastructure may help buck the
pervasive motorization that has turned rush-hour roadways in China’s
fast-growing cities into virtual parking lots. In Zhuzhou, after a
program of 20,000 bikes opened in 2011, the share of trips made by
bicycle—which had slipped to a meager (by Chinese standards) 5
percent—reportedly jumped to 10 percent. An estimated 70 percent of the
bike trips were made on shared cycles. In Hangzhou, the cycling share
dropped from 43 percent in 2000 to 34 percent in 2007, but then it
rebounded to 37 percent by 2009 after bike sharing was introduced. In
Beijing in the 1980s, more than half of all trips were made by bicycle;
by 2007 this had fallen to 23 percent. Yet as more cars and trucks
filled Beijing’s roads, the average car speed fell to less than 8 miles
per hour in 2003, down from 28 in 1994. It is too early to gauge the
impact of Beijing’s municipal bike-share program, which opened in 2012
with 2,000 cycles and plans to jump to 50,000 by 2015.

Bike-sharing cities are finding that promoting the bicycle as a
transport option can lead to more mobility and safer streets for all.
Bike-sharing programs are well positioned to hook people up with a bus
or metro system, accommodating the last mile or so between home or work
and mass transit. Having bikes ready to go on the streets encourages
more people to try out biking, and once they experience its convenience,
speed, and lower cost, they then advocate for further improvements to
cycling infrastructure—like bike lanes, paths, and parking—making it
even easier for more riders to join in. This “virtuous cycle” means that
it is increasingly likely that bike sharing could soon show up in a city
near you.

# # #

------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Stay tuned for a forthcoming release delving into more detail on bike
sharing in the United States. Janet Larsen is the Director of Research
for the Earth Policy Institute. Data and additional resources at
www.earth-policy.org <http://www.earth-policy.org>. *

/Feel free to pass this information along to friends, family members,
and colleagues!/

*Media Contact:* Reah Janise Kauffman (202) 496-9290 ext. 12 |
r...@earthpolicy.org <mailto:r...@earthpolicy.org>
*Research Contact:* Janet Larsen (202) 496-9290 ext. 14 |
jla...@earthpolicy.org <mailto:jla...@earthpolicy.org>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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