Bike-Sharing Service Might Be the Answer
04/25/08 • Posted in: Downtown Jacksonville, Eco, News, Transit by Adrienne Moore 22 Comments »
Beginning in mid-May, city commuters in Washington, D.C., will have an alternative to stuffy bus rides and long traffic lines. Clear Channel Outdoor (an outdoor advertising company), partnered with the district’s Department of Transportation, will launch the country’s first bike-share service, SmartBike DC.
Bike sharing services offer urbanites low-cost access to bicycles within the inner-city to ease traffic congestion, curb pollution and boost physical activity. Bike sharing operates on a self-serve model (no attendants) and is geared toward short-term uses. New technologies including GPS and RFID tags (radio-frequency identification) and automated payment kiosks make the systems more secure and user friendly.
The SmartBike DC system will offer bicycles at key locations in the central business district. Bicycles are parked at docking points which use a proprietary locking system to ensure that each bicycle is securely stored. The service is accessible via online subscription and subscribers will receive a SmartBike DC user card that provides access to every station of the program. An individual annual subscription is $39.99.
Bike stations consist of a horizontal rack with docking points. The docking points, as pictured above, are parking slots with locks, and they secure the bicycle when it is parked at a station. An operational team manages the rotation of bicycles for each station to assure a proper ratio of available bicycles to drop-off locations.
How could most cities afford this? As mentioned before, in the case of Washington, D.C., the district’s Department of Transportation partnered with Clear Channel Outdoor, a private advertising company. The contract allows the private company to provide advertising on as many as 800 bus shelters. Public-private partnerships are common among existing bike-share programs, according to Paul DeMaio, the founder of MetroBike LLC, a bike-share consultancy based in Washington, D.C.
Bike-share programs have proved successful in many other countries so far, including France, Spain and Austria. Leading street-furniture company JC Decaux launched its Paris operation, Velib’, in 2007. Today, more than 20,000 bikes are available at 1,400 stations. Paris has four times more bike-rental stations than subway stations and the system is completely financed by advertising and rental charges.
The market in the U.S. is wide-open right now. Most recently, Clear Channel secured San Francisco as the next city for which to develop street furniture plans, most likely including a bike-share component. Chicago has expressed interest in bringing a bike-share program to its streets as well.
If Jacksonville had a bike-share system around its core neighborhoods, traffic and pollution would decrease and our city would be populated with a healthier group. Some commuters would not be forced to wait for a bus if they did not have far to travel. Also, commuters who bike already would not waste time locking their bike up properly and worrying that it might be stolen.
So. Who wants to step up with the sponsorship?
it’s such a worthwhile investment for a city. i purchased a year membership to Barcelona’s public biking system and used it frequently. even though this was an extremely dense and walkable city, i think it would still reap benefits for Jacksonville. in addition to reducing congestion, it would give people chances to reach more far-flung areas of the core with ease, promoting surrounding neighborhood businesses.
I used it in Leon and Paris. Super rad!
While this a nice program to have here and seems like a problem solver for Jacksonville’s urban core neighborhoods. You have to ask yourself what does DC (or any of the European cities) have or offer that Jacksonville doesn’t.
The first answer in the question above is density. All these cites are highly populated environments. Both have very popular and well used mass transit in the forms of commuter rails, subways and buses that run every few minutes. Jacksonville doesn’t even offer a functioning bus system.
The second is infrastructure. DC and Paris already have extensive bike paths not only in and throughout the urban core. But also paths that also extend outside of the congestion of the city centers.
The 3rd problem Jacksonville faces is destination. Ok, great you got bike-share where you going on it? DC and Paris are places people are willing to travel to. Umm, Jacksonville. Not so much. The city centers of Paris and DC offer unlimited choices in shopping, dining, entertainment, art, and museums. Where does Springfield buy it’s food? The majority of drive to Riverside. If you stop and think about. What are the draws to the urban core of Jacksonville? We got the sports complex, a library, a couple of good bars/clubs and a couple of restaurants. Not really enough for advertiser to plunk down all the coinage needed to invest in bike-share for Jax is it?
While I would love to have a bike-share program here in Jacksonville. The truth is Jacksonville is a small market. In fact out the major cities in Florida. Jacksonville would run dead last in the ability to support a bike-share program. I think Miami is the only metropolitan center out of the other Florida cities that would have a chance at a working and sustainable bike-share program.
Not once not never. Thanks for the downer. Think outside the pine box. What if we had zombie bike share. And had a few, ah, plots where people could p/u and d/o. I think the one in SPR would would work for roundtrips to riverside, grocery or otherwise. One on the southbank, one in san marco. You don’t need them at the sports complex because that would be a round trip anyway. I mean, you can’t deny the zombie movement. Couple it with green (which is the new black) and I see us leaping ahead of Paris.
Is this bicycle motorized or do you just peddle ?
My porch has been an involuntary community bike supply place for a while now. I must have lost like 5-6 bikes (all chained) over the last 3 years. I may as well just keep them for everybody to take.
Zombie Bikes has been playing with the idea of releasing a handful of distinctly painted community bikes. Instead of unlocked ‘yellow bikes’, we would supply bikes with combo locks that would be available for anyone.
The comination to the lock would be attained either with a phone call to the shop or online at zombiebikes.com
Just a local idea!
Awesome.
matt- that is an awesome idea.
Would there be a cost? How long could a bike be out? Lastly, How does it work? Is this meant for pre-designated point-a to predesignated point-b, or could I take it to work during the day and return it that night?
I’m not sure if you’re asking about the Zombie Bikes program or a bike-share program in general. For a general bike-share program, the best site to visit is smartbikedc.com. The site answers every possible question you could have about the bike-share program. There is a fee, as referenced in the article, of $40 a month. According to the SmartBike site, a bike may be out for up to 48 hours; that is, of course, if you are riding it for 48 hours. It has to be parked at a station when not in use. You can use any bike, at any time and take it to any station you wish and drop it off.
@Matt
Great idea!
lamar outdoor advertising has a transit division here in town in the 5 pts building. I wonder if they read this blog.
It would be interesting to see if they had access to demographic info that could support it and what kind of ads would be associated with the bike station. If one lives at the carling or the 11e, how easy is it to keep a bike there. I see them all over the berkman garage. Since there are things to bike to from downtown hotels (like record stores) maybe they have looked into bike rental.
@Matt I’ll throw in some money for locks, on behalf of UJ
Great article, but unfortunately written by someone who does not use a bicycle to commute anywhere or even ride for fun. If you really want to make a change, buy a bike of your own, and get on it.
I’m confused, Debbie Harry. Adrienne and I couldn’t have biked Jax beach all day last Saturday if she didn’t have a bike and didn’t ride for fun. Looks like you need to check your facts.
Waste gas driving from your nice little loft downtown to ride your bike at Jax beach. Cool, kish!
Block me!!
Dear Carling and Stephanie (actionpotentials and Debbie Harry),
Anytime you girls want to ride with me, you’re more than welcome. I do have a bike. I take my bike from my apartment downtown on a bike rack attached to my car and drive it to the beach in order to ride. I am not a hardcore cyclist and never claimed to be one. I ride for fun. I don’t commute to work because I work in Mandarin. I shouldn’t have to defend myself for thinking a bike-share program is a good one. Instead of hating me on my blog, grow up, get over yourselves and get a life.
I will stick with childish narcissist. Thanks!!
Adrienne–thanks for the informative post. It would be great to see something like that in Jacksonville even though from a business oriented ‘cost-effective’ standpoint it wouldn’t seem to make sense demand-wise in Jax at this time (as the first commenter pointed out.) And let’s face it, money makes the world go ’round. I don’t think, however, that this means it is ever unreasonable to still desire for something like that in Jacksonville. After all, once we cease desiring things which are seemingly out of reach then we might find that this kind of thinking ultimately hinders progressive, proactive action. Maybe the idea could thrive in Jax on an initally smaller scale which Matt alluded to with his Zombie bikes idea. Nothing wrong with taking baby steps. Meanwhile, I need a bike. Must it be a fixed-gear? I think I’ll get me a BMX with black mags.
I have to agree with BikeJax on this one. Sorry. I am an avid cyclist and I commute to work (even commuted from Southside when I worked downtown), so I am in agreement that something like this would be great, but….like BJ said, we just don’t offer anything that would attract the average Jax citizen to want to get on a bike. If we did, we would likely see more of them riding around on those stolen bikes that ‘bikesharer’ has inadvertantly “given” away.
We are a select few. We are a minority in a majority of overweight, town-center shopping, frivolous buying, gas-guzzling suv driving, sprawl-loving, mindless lemmings. I work with people that would rather spend $3.40 a gallon on gas (in a vehicle that only gets 13 miles to the gallon) to drive 5 miles to work rather than walk or ride a bike (bike lanes and sidewalks the entire way, btw).
I am interested in proposing an urban bike share program in my community and wondered if anyone has information on the manufacturers of urban bikes. I notice they have a distinctive look and wanted to get cost estimates to include in my proposal. Thanks.