science environment

Where The Rubber Meets The Road For Northwest Bike Shares

By Ryan Haas (OPB)
May 12, 2014 8 a.m.
A docking station for Washington, D.C.'s Capital Bikeshare with lots of bikes available.

A docking station for Washington, D.C.'s Capital Bikeshare with lots of bikes available.

Eric Allix Rogers/Flickr

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Northwest cities are rapidly rolling toward launching bike share schemes.

Portland city officials said in March that they were still ready to move ahead with a planned bike share program through contractor Alta Bicycle Share. Seattle contracted with the Portland-based company, too and said in late-April it would start holding community meetings to explain the details of its September launch.

What’s not to love about more bikes and fewer cars on the road, right? Not much. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few potholes to dodge as these programs roll out.

The biggest problem for bike share schemes is that there is no simple formula for keeping them in the black. Many end up costing cities millions of dollars, and the founding city of North American bike share programs — Montreal — ended up eating millions in debt when its program went into bankruptcy.

The Conversation reports that the solution to financial viability isn't easy to arrive at, and each city may need to reach its own solutions:

The economic viability of bikesharing programs is a question of circumstance and intent. A business model proven to work in Miami Beach or New York may not work in Minneapolis or Salt Lake City.

Portland's approach to its bike share program is a mix of government funding and sponsorship, which sounds promising — but it is model that's been problematic for other cities that couldn't quite figure out if the bikes were a commercial venture or part of the public transport system. Portland still hasn't secured a sponsor either.

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Ryan Rzepecki, co-founder of a bike share startup, opines on this very issue in the Wall Street Journal:

Cities want bike share and many have shown a willingness to find funding for the capital costs, but the vast majority do not want to subsidize operations. Cities are asking bike share to function like public transit with equitable access and affordable pricing but are not providing the operational subsidy required to make that model work.

Seattle is taking a different bent, establishing its bike share program as a nonprofit partnership between the government and private companies. Rzepecki points out that nonprofit models have worked in cities like Minneapolis, but it requires active sponsorship and grant writing.

Whether a for-profit or nonprofit model is best suited for Northwest cities will take time to tell.

Another noteworthy issue I can see — at least in Portland — is finding enough people who don’t already own bikes to pay into the system and keep it afloat.

Strava Heat Map

See the popular cycling routes in the Portland area according to Strava heat map data.

After all, more commuters bike to work in Portland than anywhere else in the U.S., according to census data. Reaching those people who aren't already regularly using bicycles as their preferred daily transportation choice will be key to the share schemes staying upright.

Seattle seems to understand this already to some degree. It's initial analysis for bike sharing looks at key factors such as population and job density, tourist attractions and topography to ponder which neighborhoods would benefit from bike share pavilions.

And Portland is aware of its high number of bike commuters. City commissioner in charge of transport, Steve Novick, told The Oregonian that Portland's program could serve people who drive to work or use public transport and need to run quick errands during the work day.

That kind of targeted marketing and some non-traditional ways of thinking about pricing — as Rzepecki points out — could mean the difference between a program being a bust or a blockbuster.

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