Sharing bikes, taming streets

In the past several months, I’ve ridden bicycles in two cities that are hundreds of miles from my New Haven home — thanks in both cases to “bike-sharing.”

Last November, Jim Sebastian, bike program manager for the District of Columbia Department of Transportation, arranged for me to ride with him through downtown Washington and close-in neighborhoods — both of us pedaling bright red, three-speed bicycles rented from Capital Bikeshare.

And early in June, during CNU 19, I made several rides in Madison, Wisconsin, using bikes from B-cycle — a system then making its Madison debut.

Bike-sharing is on the verge of being a common amenity in urban America, just as it already is in parts of Europe. B-cycle, a Waterloo, Wisconsin, firm owned mostly by the bike-maker Trek, introduced its first bike-share network in April 2010 in Denver. In the 15 months since, B-cycle has launched operations in Boulder, Colorado; Chicago; Des Moines, Iowa; Omaha, Nebraska; San Antonio, Texas; and Kilauea, Hawaii, as well as the Wisconsin capital. By year’s end, B-cycle expects to add Louisville, Kentucky, Spartanburg, South Carolina, and Broward County, Florida, to its list of locations.

The term “bike-sharing” seems a little off — “sharing” customarily meant giving something to others, not charging them for use of a common service. But no matter. Bike rental charged by the half hour — for short trips rather than all-day or multi-day touring — is enjoying phenomenal growth.

Capital Bikeshare, which is affiliated with Alta Bicycle Share of Portland, Oregon, already has nearly 15,000 members. Most members pay a $75 annual fee for access to bikes scattered around DC and Arlington, Virginia. In addition to that fee, riders pay rental charges for each trip lasting more than 30 minutes. On Capital Bikeshare, the charge is $1.50 for the second half-hour and $3 for the third half-hour. On Madison B-cycle, the first half-hour is free, the second half-hour costs $2, and each additional half-hour costs $5. The escalating rental charge pretty much guarantees that people will use the bikes only for short periods — thus maximizing their availability to other riders each day.

For-profit bike-share firms generally collaborate with local governments or nonprofit entities; this helps ensure that bike-sharing contributes to communal good. Not-for-profit organizations inject knowledge of local people’s desires into the equation.

Congestion, pollution, health, transit benefits

The environmental benefits can be significant. Capital Bikeshare has recorded 557,282 trips on 1,100 bikes since startup last September. Even if trips are short — the average ride on Washington’s network is 1.15 miles and 21 minutes — that’s a lot of automobile trips avoided. “It helps with congestion, pollution, health, transit,” Sebastian observed. “It takes pressure off transit in peak time.”

“Our first season in Denver [from April to December], we had 103,000 rides, averaging a little over two miles,” says Jason McDowell, projects and logistics manager for B-cycle. In the absence of rental bikes, he estimates that 43 percent of those trips would have been made by car.

The expanded availability of bikes reinforces municipal efforts to make streets safer and more comfortable for non-motorists. Cities such as Madison and Washington have been installing bike lanes, “bike boxes” (designated areas where cyclists stop at intersections), special traffic signals for cyclists, and other features that help tame the streets.

When I rode with Sebastian, he noted a young woman in a dress who looked perfectly comfortable pedaling calmly through downtown. In the past, Sebastian observed, biking was largely the province of risk-taking males. Now, with bike-sharing and more civilized streets, biking is expanding its appeal, attracting the risk-averse. As these changes take hold, the urban environment should become better for everyone.

At CNU 19, it was liberating to be able to go places by bike whenever I chose. There were plenty of kiosks (docking stations) throughout the downtown, and more were in the works. Because the bikes contain electronic chips that record trips, city planners can discover which locations and routes attract cyclists, and which ones cyclists avoid. That could spur needed intervention.

Short-term bike rental surely will aid the humanizing of America’s cities.