Hi Mitchell and all. Here are a few quick answers to some of the questions you raise:
- Bike share programs require a credit card to guarantee that the bike is returned. Someone on the list raised the question of vandalism and theft (rampant in the Red Bike program) - requiring a credit card for the rentals provides recourse if the user decides it might be fun to ride the bike off a pier into the lake. Why should you be able to take a $1,000+ item out and about without some guarantee that you are going to return it? - The GPS units and the calorie counting is a bit gimmicky for the end-user, but is an integral part of the system for other reasons. The system software can track where bikes are and how full the various stations are based on the GPS readings. This allows users to pull up a webpage or app before they go grab a bike to make sure there are bikes at the station they are headed too. This also allows staff to redistribute bikes as needed. More importantly from my perspective is that the GPS data can provide the city with detailed information about where people are actually riding. This can then be used to focus on making needed infrastructure improvements to areas seeing the most ridership. - The bike shops in town that rent bikes rent them for $40+ per day, and you can't easily walk in to one, ask for a bike for an hour, and pay only a few bucks. The beauty of bike share programs is that bike stations are (ideally) distributed all over the place, so you are never more than a few blocks from one. Drive to work today, but it a lovely day and you want to grab lunch a mile away? Walk to the corner and grab a bike! Staying at the Hilton and you want to check out campus during the 2 hour break in your conference? Walk outside and grab a bike! Bike shop rentals can't meet this type of demand. - The city does have concession agreements with a number of equipment rental places in town, but a bike share program is far more capital intensive than any of these programs. You have the cost of 350 bikes, 35 bike stations, and the technology back-end to monitor the system, let users know where the bikes are, and process payments. Trek will apparently be spending over $1m per year in capital and operating costs - that makes the city's $100,000/year contribution seem worthwhile to me. I used Denver's bike share system in September and thought it was great. My biggest concern with it was that there were not as many bike stations as I would like - ideally you don't need to walk more than a block or two. This is how the system has filled out in Paris, and by all accounts, it works really well there. Madison covers a smaller area then Denver, so hopefully the bike stations will be pretty densely packed. For all interested, there is a cool website that links to live data from most of the bike share programs in the world and maps it out: http://oobrien.com/vis/bikes/. You can view past usage, where stations are in heavy use, and the number of bikes out and about at any given time. Kevin ---------------- Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2011 09:03:39 -0800 (PST) From: Mitchell Nussbaum <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Bikies] City investing in Rental bikes I have a few questions about this. Why only credit cards? This will limit who can use the bikes.Would the bikes be out year-round? Some people will ride bikes in the winter. If they are not out year-round, when will they be out? The GPS systems seem a little strange. If someone's in a hurry to get somewhere using a bike, will they really be looking at that?It is a lot of money, especially when the city is having a hard time covering other things. This is a nice program, but why was it brought up so suddenly? ?Bike shops already rent bikes. And there are boat rentals in a couple of the parks which benefit the city and I believe the city does not pay the companies to do it, the company pays rent TO the city. -- Kevin Luecke Lead Planner, Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin www.bfw.org 608-251-4456 <http://www.bfw.org/> <http://bikefed.blogspot.com/> <http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#%21/bike.fed.wi?ref=ts> <http://twitter.com/search?q=BikeFed> <http://delicious.com/network/BikeFed>
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