Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Green bike symbols indicate existing bike-share systems, while all those blue question marks are cities with bike-share under development on this fantastic map by MetroBike.

Yesterday was a momentous day for sustainable transportation: New York City launched its Citi Bike system, logging a record-breaking 6,050 trips and 13,768 miles on its first day. Already the biggest bike-share system in the country, it’s on track to expand to nearly twice its current size.

Somehow it feels like New York popped the cork and now champagne is bubbling out all over the country. Chicago just got its first look at the bikes for its system, called Divvy, due to launch in June, with memberships going on sale next week. Right across the river from New York, Hoboken is launching a dock-less bike-share system this week. Aspen, Colorado, hops on the bandwagon a week from tomorrow. Columbus, Ohio, should gets its 300 bikes in July.

Los Angeles and Long Beach were supposed to be rolling as of last month, and now it looks like December, maybe. Austin was supposed to launch its system this month but it’s been delayed, too.

San Francisco will get its system, at long last, in August, starting with 700 bikes at 70 stations and growing to 1,000 bikes shared with Redwood City, Mountain View, Palo Alto and San Jose. SF has aspirations to increase its number of bikes to 2,750 over the next few years. Meanwhile, Portland will make a bid to reclaim its status as the gold standard for American bicycling when it gets bike-share next spring, but it will be a rather late addition to the bike-share ecosystem.

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According to a survey of CaBi members, the average subscriber drove 198 fewer miles per year after joining the bike-share system. Photo: Capital Bikeshare

We’ve noted before that it can be challenging to figure out exactly how much driving is avoided when someone rides a bike. But here we have it straight from the horse’s mouth – nearly 7,000 horses, in fact. According to a November 2012 survey of Capital Bikeshare members, released today, the average subscriber drove 198 miles less per year after joining the system. Multiply that by 22,200 members and that’s 3.7 million pounds of CO2 that won’t get belched into the atmosphere. Nice work, CaBistas!

Some other takeaways from the member survey:

Capital Bikeshare both enhances access to transit and shifts trips away from transit. Almost a quarter of CaBi users had used bike-share to get to the bus in the past month, and 17 percent had used it six or more times to access the metro system. At the same time, transit is the mode most likely to get replaced with bike-share trips: 61 percent of respondents say they ride Metrorail less often and 52 percent ride a bus less often. On the plus side, though, 50 percent drive less often.

For any given trip, if bike-share hadn’t been available, 44 percent would have taken a bus or train, 38 percent would have walked, 5 percent would have ridden their own bike, and 4 percent would have driven.

Bike-share members drive less. According to the survey report, “a quarter (26 percent) reduced their driving miles since joining Capital Bikeshare; 11 percent reduced driving by more than 1,000 miles. Two-thirds (65 percent) of respondents who reported their mileage made no change in driving miles; only 9 percent increased their driving miles.” CaBi members were never big drivers, but they reported driving an average 1,805 miles per year before joining Capital Bikeshare and 1,607 miles per year since joining, “for a reduction of about 198 miles annually” per person – or a cumulative 4.4 million miles.

Of the 4.4 million miles not driven… more than half are commuting miles, which often occur at peak hours. That’s a significant amount of car traffic taken off Washington’s streets by these snazzy red bikes. In total, 58 percent of members use it to go to and from work, and 40 percent commute via bike-share “often.” All together, about half of bike-share trips are work-related.

CaBi saves members money. An average of $15.39 per week, in fact – or about $800 annually, per person.

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The staff of Buffalo CarShare is working to make the service accessible to people with low incomes. Image: Buffalo CarShare

The growth of car-share has helped people forgo the expense of car ownership in major cities like Washington and Seattle, where it’s been widely adopted. But not every city has the market to sustain car-share services from companies like Zipcar or Hertz. In his book Walkable City, Jeff Speck writes that your city might not be “ready” for car-share if, when you stick out your hand downtown, a cab doesn’t stop.

Now an organization in Buffalo, New York, is working to open up car-share to new markets and new demographics. The non-profit Buffalo CarShare has grown to serve 500 members since it launched four years ago in one of the poorest cities in the country.

Making car-share work in a city like Buffalo took some adaptation. Co-founder and executive director Creighton Randall says Buffalo CarShare has had to adjust its business model to appeal to a much more diverse clientele than, say, Zipcar. Nearly half of Buffalo CarShare’s members live in households with an annual income of less than $25,000. About a quarter don’t have an email account. By contrast, less than 13 percent of Zipcar users report household incomes lower than $30,000. In Buffalo, Zipcar markets its cars almost exclusively to University of Buffalo students and staff.

Buffalo CarShare is able to reach people with low incomes primarily because — in contrast to Zipcar — it is willing to serve customers face-to-face or through the mail, if need be, Randall says. The business operates out of a transit-accessible storefront near the city center — and many of its customers are walk-ins. The organization is also willing to send out bills by mail, or accept money orders. Its 14 cars are sited at 12 different locations across the city.

“If we appealed to the same membership base in other cities where this works, it just wouldn’t work,” said Randall. “For car-sharing to work in a smaller city like Buffalo, that doesn’t have an enormous college as an anchor institution, it needs to work for everybody.”

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B-cycle is the first bike-share company to give members access in multiple cities for no additional charge.

B-cycle memberships are about to get a lot more portable.

Beginning next week, annual memberships from this bike-sharing company will be honored in 15 cities where B-Cycle operates, from Nashville, Tennessee, to Kailua, Hawaii. The program is called B-connected.

Bob Burns, president of B-cycle, said in a press release that the program will “empower annual members to experience visiting cities by bike versus car.”

B-connected will be available in the following B-cycle cities:

• Denver, CO
• Boulder, CO
• Madison, WI
• San Antonio, TX
• Houston, TX
• Spartanburg, SC
• Charlotte, NC
• Des Moines, IA
• Kansas City, MO
• Omaha, NE
• Nashville, TN
• Kailua, HI
• Broward County, FL.
• Fort Worth, TX (launching Spring)
• Salt Lake City, UT (launching Spring)

The company has been exploring the “B-connected” model since last March, using Denver, Boulder, and Madison as pilot cities. If a B-cycle member incurs additional fees while in another B-cycle city (by taking a bike out longer than the allotted time limit, for instance), they will be charged by the system where the trip took place.

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Pittsburgh was the newest city to announce its bike-share plans this week, when it confirmed the city would add a 500-bike system by the spring of next year.

Kansas City was one of the first cities in the Midwest to launch a bike-share system, when it did so last summer. But soon it will have plenty of company. Image: Missouri Bicycle Federation

But nearby Columbus, Ohio, will beat them to the punch. Ohio’s capital city is planning to add 300 bikes this summer. Meanwhile, Indianapolis’ plan was to roll out its system next month.

The truth is you would be hard-pressed to find a large Midwestern city that hasn’t taken formal steps toward adding a bike-share system.

Both Cleveland and Detroit are studying bike-share. Cincinnati completed a bike-share study late last year, and is now seeking proposals from contractors. Milwaukee is assembling money for a system. Chicago hopes to add 3,000 bikes this spring.

And of course there’s the grandaddy of them all: Minneapolis’ Nice Ride. Launched in 2010, this system currently boasts more than 1,200 bikes. Late last year, the system surpassed half a million trips.

Midwestern cities have been inspired by some of the more spectacular examples on the coasts, according to Eric Rogers, executive director of BikeWalkKC, the nonprofit organization that manages Kansas City’s bike-share system. Kansas City was a little ahead of the pack when it launched Kansas City B-Cycle, with 200 bikes at 12 stations, last summer.

“The last few years a lot of cities, especially in the Midwest, have seen good examples from places like Chicago and Portland and New York and D.C. of a lot of innovative facilities that are out there: cycle tracks, bike boxes, bike-sharing,” he said. “There’s so much more knowledge out there now that it’s easier to develop a solution and pursue it.”

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Chattanooga, Tennessee, was, in a lot of ways, not an ideal city for bike-sharing. It’s a somewhat sprawling city, without a strong culture of cycling and walking. In addition, only a small percentage of area residents use transit to get around, so not many are leaving the car in the garage.

Chattanooga is blazing trails as a small bike-sharing city. Image: Times Free Press

But local leaders didn’t use these challenges as excuses not to act to improve public health. This city of 170,000 launched the Chattanooga Bicycle Transit System last July, with 30 stations and 300 bikes dispersed around a 2.5-square mile area of downtown. In doing so, little Chattanooga beat larger cities like New York and Chicago to the punch.

“Our purpose with bike-sharing was to put a large amount of cyclists on the street in a short time, to change the dynamic, to improve our air quality, our health and active transportation overall,” said Chattanooga Bike Coordinator Philip Pugliese, at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference in Kansas City last week.

Chattanooga had studied bike-sharing since as early as 2007. During that time, bike-share supporters surveyed local residents about their interest in cycling, if they had access to a bike. About 75 percent reported some level of interest.

“We felt fairly confident that people would try this,” Pugliese said.

The city was able to secure $100,000 in funding from the local Lyndhurst Foundation to launch the effort in 2009. Partnering with the local transit system, CARTA, the city of Chattanooga won federal air-quality funds the following year to jump-start the system.

In light of the obstacles, Pugliese said the budding program has been a success.

It can be difficult to launch bike-share in a small city with a transportation system that is heavily reliant on car travel, Pugliese said. But Chattanooga’s experience can offer inspiration to other small cities.

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Earlier this week, Denver’s B-Cycle bike-share system came under fire for allegedly side-stepping low-income neighborhoods. The accuser was City Council Member Paul Lopez, and his complaint was not something that system operators necessarily deny: There aren’t many stations in low-income neighborhoods.

Denver's B-Cycle is under fire for doing a poor job serving low-income neighborhoods. Photo: Denver Post

The broader claim — that bike-share isn’t serving the populations that might benefit most from it — has dogged nearly every system in the country. And at its core there is some truth: American bike-share systems aren’t doing a good job reaching low-income and minority populations, according to a recent FHWA report.

Only 1 percent of Boston Hubway users are black. In Washington, DC, only 3 percent of Capital Bikeshare users are African-American, according to CaBi’s annual survey [PDF]. Denver’s B-Cycle users are 81 percent white and only 21 percent have annual household incomes of less than $50,000, according to the Denver Post.

These are statistics that bike-share cities are painfully aware of. And every locale has adopted different methods to reach disadvantaged groups. Denver and Boulder work with the local housing authorities to make memberships available to residents of public housing. Hubway offers subsidized memberships to anyone with an income less than 400 percent of the poverty rate. Minneapolis’s Nice Ride requires no deposit to be held on the user’s credit card.

But with many of these programs, success has been limited. One issue is siting — that was the point raised by Council Member Lopez in Denver. B-Cycle has only one station in west Denver, where much of the city’s Hispanic population resides. ”That truly says something,” he told the Post.

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Weekday usage patterns of Washington DC's Capital Bikeshare, Denver B-cycle, and Minneapolis's Nice Ride. Image: FHWA

The Federal Highway Administration has come out with a handy report [PDF] for communities thinking about getting into the bike-sharing game. Based on a study of 12 planned and existing bike-sharing systems from around the U.S., the report is intended to help explain the basics of bike-share and guide cities through the choices they’ll face when launching a system. While the specific advice isn’t exactly groundbreaking, the mere fact that the FHWA has produced the guide indicates that bike-sharing is becoming increasingly common in America.

In the report, FHWA offers guidance on topics from bike-share business models to station planning and implementation. It outlines typical costs per bike and per station, as well as pricing structures for bike-share members. The report also provides a useful guide to the potential sources of federal funding for bike-share systems. (Most systems rely on a combination of federal, state and local funding sources.)

All of the lessons collected in the report come from U.S. cities, not from the world’s leading bike-share systems, which limits the document but perhaps makes the idea of bike-share seem more attainable to other American cities. Among the existing bike-share systems examined for the report, Washington DC’s Capital Bikeshare is the largest, with about 1,700 bikes and 175 stations currently. By comparison, Montreal’s Bixi has 5,000 bikes, and London’s bike-share system has about 8,000.

Here’s a look at what the FHWA is telling prospective bike-share cities.

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A recent US News and World Report article explored the economics of bike sharing — noting that cities weren’t profiting from their new systems.

Since its launch, Washington D.C.'s Capital Bikeshare has recovered 97 percent of its operating costs through user fees. Photo: Bike Arlington

That is hardly news. Few cities expected the popular form of public transportation infrastructure to be a cash cow.

More remarkable is the news that Washington, D.C.’s Capital Bikeshare, the country’s premier system, is nearly operationally profitable, according to the U.S. News story:

Since its start in September 2010, Capital Bikeshare has taken in $2.47 million and spent $2.54 million on operating expenses. And that doesn’t even include the expensive things, like docking stations—which can cost well over $50,000 each—plus the bikes themselves. Those capital costs, at $7 million thus far, are covered by federal funds.

Roads, transit, sidewalks — no one is going around asking why they aren’t profitable in their first year and a half. No one expects that.

From a purely financial standpoint, bike-sharing in Washington is a much better value, as Streetsblog Network blog Systemic Failure points out:

That is an astounding 97% “farebox” recovery. To put in perspective, the average rail system in the US is lucky to earn back more than 50%. The typical bus service gets back less than 20%.

And then there is the capital cost — a whopping $7 million. By comparison, a single 70-seat BART railcar will cost over $5 million.

There are dozens of reasons why bike-sharing is sweeping the country. The fact that they are cheap to build and operate, compared with the alternatives, is just icing on the cake.

Earlier today we brought you a story about a new and potentially dangerous technological innovation – Facebook in cars. To help end the week on a higher note, here’s some far more encouraging news on the transportation tech front.

A challenge to app developers aims to help this Boston bike-sharer plan his route, especially if it's lunch time. Photo: The Fosbury Flop

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has partnered with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation in issuing a challenge to software developers: Create three new programs that combine real-time transit, bike-sharing, and even food truck data, in order to demonstrate how transit and bike-sharing complement each other.

Boston rolled out their new 60-station, 600-cycle bike-sharing system, called Hubway and sponsored by shoe maker New Balance, last July. It has been so successful — logging 140,000 trips in just four months — that Boston’s Metropolitan Area Planning Council is overseeing its expansion to 90 stations and 900 bikes starting next year. But in addition to upping the number of bikes, Boston hopes to make Hubway more useful to its customers in other ways.

The MBTA/MassDOT challenge is really three separate challenges:

• A software application that combines transit schedules and real-time Hubway bike availability to display possible connections between the two modes;
• A visualization of “A day in the Life” of Boston’s transit and bike-sharing systems, possibly along the lines of what Oliver O’Brien has done for London; and, as a bonus,
• The BLT (Bikes, Lunch, & T) Challenge, with the goal of helping “residents and visitors learn about and get to Boston’s food trucks.”

The winners of the first two challenges will each receive a year-long transit pass and a year-long membership to Hubway; all three challenge winners will receive a free pass to area food truck festivals.

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