Alta runs Boston's Hubway Bike Share system, among others. Photo: The Fosbury Flop

A board committee of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) is expected to recommend selecting Alta tomorrow, according to a memo [PDF] from CEO Jack Broadbent. The memo says that Alta ranked the highest out of six bidders in meeting the agency’s criteria.

If awarded the contract, Alta would run a system initially consisting of 1,000 bicycles and 100 station kiosks – half in San Francisco and the other half in four cities in Silicon Valley. The contract would be capped at $5,969,000, according to the memo.

The Portland-based Alta already runs systems in Boston, Montreal, Melbourne, and Washington D.C., where the wildly successful Capital Bikeshare was recently reported to be nearly operationally profitable. Alta has also been selected to run systems in New York City and Chicago, expected to launch later this year.

In each city Alta has partnered with the Montreal-based Public Bicycle System Company, which manufactures the bikes and kiosks. PBSC also makes the equipment for the Barclays Cycle Hire in London.

Alta Bikeshare is an affiliate of Alta Planning + Design, a bicycle- and pedestrian-focused transportation planning firm which has an office in Berkeley.

The system is expected to be rolled out throughout August and September.

An Ecobici station in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City. This station was full of bikes, but a nearby station was nearly empty. Photo: Noah Kazis

Mexico City never had much of a reputation as a bicycle city. Traffic is terribly congested and extremely dangerous — drivers don’t even have to take an eye exam to get a license — and until recently, the air was thick with smog no one hoped to inhale too deeply.

Under the leadership of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, however, Mexico City is taking a multi-pronged approach toward becoming bike-friendly, making changes to its streets, its laws and its culture. Most important has been the introduction of a new bike-share system, Ecobici, that’s expanding rapidly.

In 2007, when Ebrard began a concerted effort to improve cycling, half of all trips were less than eight kilometers long, yet only one percent of trips were made by bike. The city resolved to boost cycling to five percent of all trips in just five years. Mexico City has made big strides under Ebrard but will probably need more time to hit the initial five-year target. Today bicycle mode-share is between two and three percent of trips, according to ITDP.

At the center of the city’s effort is Ecobici, which launched two years ago. A public bike-sharing system funded mainly by the government, Ecobici offers 1,200 bikes at 90 stations, making it comparable in scope to Washington, DC’s Capital Bikeshare but far smaller, for the time being, than systems in London and Paris.

As of today the system can only be found in the trendy Condesa neighborhood, which is often compared to New York City’s Soho. Even limited to one neighborhood, however, demand is sky-high. To ensure quality service for the 30,000 current members, Ecobici has had to set up a waiting list for new subscribers. Otherwise there just wouldn’t be enough bikes to go around, explained Ivan De La Lanza, coordinator of Mexico City’s bicycle mobility strategy. Each bike is already being taken out an average of 10 times per day.

Though Ecobici is only available in a single neighborhood, a full 40 percent of new cyclists in the city use the system, said De La Lanza. It also may be encouraging others to get on their bikes more. According to Good magazine, the use of personal bikes rose 50 percent in the year that Ecobici opened.

A map hanging in Ecobici headquarters shows the current extent of the system along with two expansions planned for this year. Photo: Noah Kazis

This year, the system is set for not one but two major expansions. In June, the service area will spread east, into the Roma neighborhood and Mexico City’s historical downtown. Then in November, Ecobici will move west, surrounding the Bosque Chapultepec — Mexico City’s equivalent of Central Park — and expanding into the business-oriented Polanco area. Membership is expected to skyrocket to between 73,000 and 100,000 users, according to Ecobici official Oscar Montiel.

Those numbers are all the more impressive given that essentially every Ecobici user is a Mexico City resident. Unlike most bike-share systems, Ecobici doesn’t offer daily or weekly memberships that might be attractive for visitors. In American systems, those casual users can comprise up to half of all bike-share trips.

Officials had worried about putting tourists on Mexico City’s dangerous roads, said De La Lanza, who noted that the first three fatalities on Paris’s pioneering Velib system were all tourists. Ecobici is looking to begin offering short-term memberships as a way of increasing revenue.

Inside the Ecobici maintenance and storage facility. Photo: Noah Kazis

In the surest sign of success, other neighborhoods are asking for the city to bring bike-share to their streets. Coyoacán, a quiet southern neighborhood that was once home to Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky, has made the most enthusiastic requests for bike-share, said Montiel, but its relatively distant location make it a poor fit for the system at this point.

Despite Mexico City’s high crime rate, Ecobici has only lost a third as many bikes to theft and vandalism as officials expected. And the city has been able to address equity concerns that have arisen with other bike-share systems. Residents who lack a credit or debit card, normally necessary to become a bike-share member, can instead link their account to their telephone bill, said Montiel.

The system took a little getting used to for Mexico City residents. When it opened, Ecobici users only made around 2,000 trips a day. After a small expansion, that number has grown to 8,500 daily rides as residents have grown comfortable with the system. Women especially took some time to get on bike-share. When it opened, 80 percent of all Ecobici users were men, mostly between the ages of 25 and 35. Now women make up more than a third of riders. “We know that the perception of danger is getting down,” said Montiel, who expected to see more gender parity as the city’s bike infrastructure continued to improve.

Bike lanes, however, have been a weak point in Mexico City’s efforts to expand cycling. According to CNN, the city pledged to build 300 kilometers of new bike lanes between 2006 and 2012. By December, only 6.8 km had been completed. The city government told CNN that Ecobici had replaced that part of the city’s bicycle strategy.

Sustainable transportation advocates, demanding a guaranteed five percent of transportation spending for bike and pedestrian projects, protested by painting their own “Wikilane” in front of the legislature.

The protected bike lane on Reforma, to the right, runs in the service road of an extremely wide avenue, often referred to as Mexico City's Champs Elysees. Photo: Noah Kazis

Quality counts as well as quantity, though, and on that metric one bike lane rates especially high: The physically separated lane runs up Reforma — Mexico City’s most important avenue, its Champs Elysees. Reforma is symbolic and central, and Ecobici operators ascribed a significant amount of the increase in cycling to the safety and visibility of this single bike lane. “It was really important for the city to take this avenue for a bike lane and make a statement,” said De La Lanza. Though Reforma still has five lanes of traffic in each direction, on the bike lane riding felt quite safe.

Along with Ecobici and new bike lanes, a major focus of Mexico City’s bicycle planning is to integrate bikes with the city’s extensive transit system, soon to include 12 subway lines and four bus rapid transit lines, said De La Lanza. Both outdoor and secure indoor bike parking are being built at transit stations in order to allow intermodal trips.

An older bike lane, running in a median of Chapultepec, still shows a sign telling cyclists that helmet use is mandatory. That law was repealed in 2010. Photo: Noah Kazis

Legal changes, too, have boosted bicycling in Mexico City. In 2010, the city passed a package of bike-friendly laws. Most prominently, Mexico City repealed its mandatory helmet law on the grounds that it was discouraging cycling and leaving everyone in greater danger. “It’s safer for them to cycle, whether they have a helmet or not,” argued Montiel.

At the same time, Mexico City reduced speed limits in areas with traffic calming or heavy pedestrian traffic and hiked up the penalty for driving or parking in a bike lane.

Though cycling has made significant strides over the last five years, its position in Mexico City is hardly assured. Last year, a prominent radio host, Angel Verdugo, called on his afternoon listeners to “crush” the “red plague” of cyclists — to literally run them over. Verdugo was fired, but the moment revealed the ferocity of anti-cycling sentiment that seems to persist in some quarters of the city.

The political winds could shift after Mayor Ebrard leaves office this year. “It’s an election year,” he said, “so we have to complete every project in the city, for Ecobici, for the bike lanes.” Some of the candidates for mayor this year, he implied, might not be so bike-friendly.

A photo simulation of a bike share station from the SFMTA.

The launch was pushed back one month from its previously proposed date “to give prospective vendors more time to develop thorough proposals and more time to prepare for the system’s launch,” said SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose.

According to a document [PDF] from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), the lead agency for the program, the submission period for proposals from prospective bike share vendors was extended until today following numerous requests.

The launch, originally scheduled for spring, may be rolled out in stages throughout August and September, depending on which vendor is chosen, the document says. While August 1 is the new “desired start date,” October 1 is the deadline for the vendor to complete the rollout of 100 bike share stations planned for the pilot — 50 of which will be in downtown San Francisco.

Questions submitted to the BAAQMD, listed in the document along with the agency’s responses, include several complaints from vendors that a July 1 launch would be unrealistic.

“Unless a preferred vendor has already been chosen and has begun manufacturing, it is not possible for any vendor to manufacture, deliver, test, and deploy the equipment required to support 100 stations, 1,000 bikes, and 1,500 to 2,000 locking docks over five cities, spread out over the 50 miles between San Francisco and San Jose, in the ten weeks from contract award to launch,” writes Richard Layman of BicyclePASS, in a preface to an extension request.

A promise of a quick and cost-effective installation is one of the many criteria by which the BAAQMD and transit agencies will select a vendor. Other factors include the sustainability of the vendor’s price structure, the vendor’s experience launching other bike share systems, the durability and design of its bikes and stations, and how well the vendor adheres to technical and legal requirements.

The other companies that submitted questions addressed by the BAAQMD were Alameda Bicycle, Blazing Saddles, Serco, Library Bikes, and ParkWide, which launched a park-to-park bike rental system in San Francisco in October.

Following today’s submission deadline, the agencies plan to announce a chosen vendor in May.

Find more details about Request for Proposals criteria on the BAAQMD web site.

The SFMTA has released a preliminary map of potential bike-share station locations (H/T Cyclelicious for inputting them into Google).

San Franciscans are burning with curiosity about the imminent arrival of bike share this summer. At a forum held by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Center yesterday, participants wanted to know details like where the stations will be located and what color the bikes will be.

Officials working on the project say they can’t provide answers until the vendor is selected (expected by April), but Cyclelicious provides an early map of stations proposed by the SFMTA. Project manager Heath Maddox said that while the pilot’s 50 downtown stations won’t serve as wide an area as the world’s leading systems, the stations will be close enough together to achieve a similar “blanket-style” coverage within the service zone.

“The most important thing is to have a density of coverage that works,” Maddox told Streetsblog after the presentation [PDF] yesterday. “The regional system is really set up — and it makes sense — to be the first and last mile for regional transit, but the nature of what we’re doing in San Francisco is very different. It’ll be [for] anybody and everybody who wants to make a short trip via bicycle.”

Maddox said the station proposals are still very premature, and that the SFMTA will collect feedback on them through public hearings, an online map, and a possible town hall-style meeting.

As far as the potential for expansion after the pilot, planners couldn’t say much, but Maddox did present a citywide map of areas that are “ripe” for bike share, mainly featuring transit-accessible commercial corridors. Karen Schkolnick, the program manager for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, said planners hope to use the information gathered from the regional 1,000-bike pilot to develop a ”seamless transition to the next system.”

A bike-share vendor demonstration at Civic Center in December 2010 (this is not necessarily what the system will look like). Photo: SFBC/Flickr

The system will include 500 bicycles at approximately 50 stations in downtown San Francisco, plus another 500 bikes and 50 stations located near Caltrain stations in Redwood City, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and San Jose. The scope is more ambitious than San Francisco’s previous proposal for bike-share, but smaller in scale than the world’s most successful systems.

“A large-scale citywide bike-share will make it easier for locals and visitors alike to see San Francisco by bike, and help our city reach the goal of 20 percent of trips by bike by 2020,” said San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Deputy Director Kit Hodge.

While the SFBC is looking forward to the pilot launch this summer, Hodge said it “also believe[s] that the pilot should be quickly expanded into a robust, big-enough-to-succeed phenomenon that have proven successful in Paris, China and London.”

SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose said San Francisco stations will be “centered in SF’s employment- and transit-rich Downtown/SOMA corridor between the Financial District, Market Street and the Transbay and Caltrain terminals with connections at Market Street BART stations and the Ferry Terminal.”

The system will launch “just in time for America’s Cup,” said Rose, as a key component of the “People Plan” announced by Mayor Ed Lee last April. Bike-share will be part of the initiative to encourage the hundreds of thousands of spectators expected to travel to the Embarcadero this summer to get around by foot, transit, and by bike.

The July launch was pushed back a few months from its original spring schedule, but Rose says the SFMTA is “confident that all the work we’ve done over the last year to ensure that the project meets the needs of all of our project partners throughout the region will yield a better result when we deliver the pilot later this year.”

The program is not San Francisco’s first plan for bike-share — a previous plan for a meager pilot of 50 bikes was dropped in late 2009 when Clear Channel backed out of a partnership with the city, after which then-Mayor Gavin Newsom pledged to launch a larger system. Santa Clara County’s VTA was set to launch the region’s first bike-share in 2010, but delayed its own program until it could be integrated into this broader regional system. Agencies are currently selecting a vendor to operate the system.

Stay tuned to Streetsblog for more details as the program develops. For more information, check out the SFMTA’s website, which includes this presentation [PDF].

Map of San Francisco bike share areas. Specific locations are to be determined. Image: SFMTA

Regional locations for bike share stations along the Caltrain line.

Phil Ginsburg and Mayor Lee lead a convoy of Parkwide bicycles. Photo: Aaron Bialick

San Franciscans hungry for the arrival of a public bike-share system next spring can now get an appetizer with the launch of a new park-to-park bike rental concession linking popular recreational destinations throughout the city.

“Parkwide,” a new bike rental company developed in collaboration with the Recreation and Parks Department, today announced the launch of five sites throughout the city where users can pick up and drop off rented bicycles.

“This is the launch of what will eventually blossom into a park-to-park, and maybe someday a street-corner-to-street-corner network of bike rentals,” said SF Recreation and Parks General Manager Phil Ginsburg.

The service may be most suited to the needs of tourists, but it is expected to provide easy access to bicycle rentals for residents and visitors alike without the need to return the bikes to their original location. Parkwide is not bike-share by any stretch, but the multiple pick-up and drop-off locations lend it a bike-share-esque quality.

Parkwide bikes at the Golden Gate Park Music Concourse. Photo: Aaron Bialick

“You can just drop it off and not worry about it, everything is taken care of,” said Mayor Ed Lee. ”You have today the first semblance of bike sharing in the city.”

“If you have a bicycle in a park, you can easily get across the whole park in one day and even continue on to the next park,” said Parkwide’s Jeanne Orellana. ”You can ride from Golden Gate Park to the Marina Green and still go to the museums.”

Three Parkwide locations opened for business on September 24: Justin “Pee Wee” Herman Plaza at the foot of Market Street, the Golden Gate Park Music Concourse (behind the bandshell), and the nearby intersection of John F. Kennedy Drive and Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive on the weekends. Two more locations at the Marina Green and Union Square are expected to open in November and December, respectively.

The program is a collaboration between the Rec and Parks Department and San Francisco bike rental companies Bay City Bike, Blazing Saddles, and Bike and Roll — normally competitors.

Orellana, who also manages Bay City Bike, said the idea was proposed by the Recreation and Parks Department as a way to promote biking in and between the city’s parks.

“It was a big deal, because until then, we were just competitors,” she said. “We said, we’re either going to compete and no one’s going to get it because we’re not going to be happy, or we address it together.”

“We’ve been working so long on it that we’ve all gotten to be really good friends,” Orellana added.

Parkwide’s park-centric locale is its main distinction from the more traditional bike rental companies run by the owners, explained Orellana.

A bike share demo station in Golden Gate Park in 2009. Photo: Bryan Goebel

“In that sector, we’re all focusing on getting people over the Golden Gate Bridge,” she said. “[The goal of] the Parkwide platform is to promote the parks and the San Francisco neighborhoods.”

The Rec and Parks Department is expected to collect over $1 million in revenue over the next five years from the program, said Ginsburg.

In spring 2012, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency expects to launch a public bike-share pilot program featuring 500 bikes at 50 stations throughout the city’s downtown core. The system will also launch in cities along the Caltrain corridor: Mountain View, Palo Alto, Redwood City and San Jose.

Cantor's reasons wanting cuts to bike share.

Just last year, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor proposed eliminating the federal Safe Routes to Schools programs in his YouCut program, where people vote on their least favorite projects on a special website. While Safe Routes to Schools didn’t “win” that election, Cantor is now proposing to eliminate federal bike share subsidies.

Even if the federal government eliminated funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs altogether, it wouldn’t do much of anything to reduce the federal deficit. Note in Cantor’s proposal there are hard figures for savings if the grants to Worstel Wool Manufacturers or a scholarship and research program to promote green technologies were eliminated. That’s because there’s no line item in the federal government for “bike share” programs, which is probably why bicycle and pedestrian projects are blamed for the bankruptcy of the federal transportation trust fund.

In the 2011 fiscal year the federal government granted $53 billion in grants through the transit and highway trust funds. Less than 2% of that was spent on bicycle and pedestrian programs, and barely any of that was spent on bike share programs. The expansion of Washington D.C.’s program was the big bike share expenditure at $1.9 million.

I suppose it could be worse. At Cantor he didn’t refer to bike sharing as a communist plot.

Nice Ride MN is a hit. The Twin Cities bike share recently celebrated its one year anniversary in June. And in July they started an expansion by adding more stations and bicycles to the network.

We talked with Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak about the decisions that went into getting Nice Ride MN off the ground:

You gotta go big or go home. You can’t put a few around. You’re hopping on that bike, it’s like a trapeze, you’re not gonna swing on that trapeze unless you know there’s another one to grab. You’re not gonna hop on that bike and cross town, unless you know there’s a place to go.

Thanks to the Bikes Belong Foundation we’re able to provide this short snapshot of the Nice Ride MN system, how it works, and where it’s headed.

Bicyclists on their way through the city are part of city life. They can, with ease, switch between being bicyclists and pedestrians. Photos by Jan Gehl.

Editor’s note: This is the final installment in our series this week featuring Danish architect and livable streets luminary Jan Gehl. The pieces are excerpts from his book, “Cities for People” published by Island Press. Donate to Streetsblog SF and you’ll qualify to win a copy of the book, courtesy of Island Press.

Bicyclists represent a different and somewhat rapid form of foot traffic, but in terms of sensory experiences, life and movement, they are part of the rest of city life. Naturally, bicyclists are welcome in support of the goal to promote lively, safe, sustainable and healthy cities. The following is about planning good cities for bicyclists, and is handled relatively narrowly and in direct relation to a discussion on the human dimension in city planning.

Around the world there are numerous cities where bicycles and bicycle traffic would be unrealistic. It is too cold and icy for bicycles in some areas, too hot in others. In some places the topography is too mountainous and steep for bicycles. Bicycle traffic is simply not a realistic option in those situations. Then there are surprises like San Francisco, where you might think bicycling would be impractical due to all the hills. However, the city has a strong and dedicated bicycle culture. Bicycling is also popular in many of the coldest and warmest cities, because, all things considered, even they have a great number of good bicycling days throughout the year.

The fact remains that a considerable number of cities worldwide have a structure, terrain and climate well suited for bicycle traffic. Over the years, many of these cities have thrown their lot in with traffic policies that prioritized car traffic and made bicycle traffic dangerous or completely impossible. In some places extensive car traffic has kept bicycle traffic from even getting started.

In many cities, bicycle traffic continues to be not much more than political sweet talk, and bicycle infrastructure typically consists of unconnected stretches of paths here and there rather than the object of a genuine, wholehearted and useful approach. The invitation to bicycle is far from convincing. Typically in these cities only one or two percent of daily trips to the city are by bicycle, and bicycle traffic is dominated by young, athletic men on racing bikes. There is a yawning gap from that situation to a dedicated bicycle city like Copenhagen, where 37 percent of traffic to and from work or school is by bicycle. Here bicycle traffic is more sedate, bicycles are more comfortable, the majority of cyclists are women, and bicycle traffic includes all age groups from school children to senior citizens.

At a time when fossil fuel, pollution and problems with climate and health are increasingly becoming a global challenge, giving higher priority to bicycle traffic would seem like an obvious step to take. We need good cities to bike in and there are a great many cities where it would be simple and cheap to upgrade bicycle traffic.

Bicycle traffic should be automatically integrated into an overall transport strategy. (Copenhagen).

If it is possible to take bicycles on the train, subway and by taxi, then travel can be combined over great distances. (Copenhagen)

A Whole Hearted Bicycle Policy

The cities that have successfully promoted bicycle traffic in recent decades can be tapped for good ideas and requirements for becoming a good bicycle city. Copenhagen is a compelling example of a city whose longstanding bicycle tradition came under threat from car traffic in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the oil crises in the 1970s were the catalyst for a targeted approach to inviting people to ride their bicycles more. And the message was received: today bicycles make up a considerable part of city traffic, and have helped keep vehicular traffic at an unusually low level compared to other large cities in Western Europe. The experiences from Copenhagen are used in the following to provide a platform for discussion about the good bicycle city.

In Copenhagen, a cohesive network for bicycles comprising all parts of the city has gradually been established. Traffic is so quiet on small side streets and residential streets in 15 and 30 km per hour/9 and 19 mph zones that a special cycle network is not necessary, but all major streets have one. On most streets, the network consists of bicycle paths along the sidewalks, typically using the curbstones as dividers toward the sidewalk, as well as parking and driving lanes. In some places bike lanes are not delimited by curbstones, but rather marked with painted stripes inside a row of parked cars, so that the cars protect the bicycles from motorized traffic. In fact, this system is known as “Copenhagen-style bicycle lanes.”

Another link in the city’s bicycle system is green bicycle routes, which are dedicated bike routes through city parks and along discontinued railway tracks. These paths are intended for bicycles in transit and are viewed  as a supplementary opportunity, a sightseeing possibility and a green option for bicycles. However, the main principle of bicycle policy is for bicycles to have room on ordinary streets, where just like the others in traffic, their owners have errands in shops, residences and offices. The principle is for bicycle traffic to be safe from door to door throughout the city.

Room for this comprehensive bicycle network has been largely gained by downsizing car traffic. Parking space and driving lanes have been gradually reduced, as traffic patterns have moved from car to bicycle traffic, and therefore bicycles needed more room. Most of the city’s major four-lane streets have been converted to two-lane streets with two bicycle paths, two sidewalks and a broad median strip intended to make it safer for pedestrians to cross the street. Roadside trees have been planted and traffic is two-way as before.

Bicycle paths are placed along sidewalks in the same direction as ve- hicular traffic, and are always on the right and thus “slow” side of vehicular traffic. That way all traffic groups know — more or less — where they have the bicycles, which is the safest system for all parties.

Bicycles as Part of Integrated Transport Thinking

The invitation to bike must mean that bicycle traffic is integrated into the overall transport strategy. It has to be possible to bring bikes on trains and the metro lines, and preferably in city buses so that it is possible to travel by combining bike trips with public transport. Taxis too must be able to transport bicycles when needed.

Another important link in an integrated transport policy is the possibility to park bicycles securely at stations and traffic hubs. Good bicycle parking options are also needed along streets in general, at schools, offices and dwellings. New offices and industrial buildings should include bicycle parking, changing rooms and showers for bicyclists as a natural part of their planning.

Traffic safety is a crucial element in overall bicycle strategies. A cohesive bicycle network protected by curbstones and parked cars is an important first step. Another key concern is the experienced and real safety of the city’s intersections. Copenhagen is working on several strategies. Large intersections have special bicycle lanes of blue asphalt and bicycle icons to remind drivers to watch out for bicycles. Intersections also have special light signals for bicycles, which typically give a green light to bicycle traffic six seconds before cars are allowed to move. Trucks and buses are required to have special bicycle mirrors and frequent media campaigns admonish drivers to watch out for bicycles, particularly at intersections.

Good bicycle cities know that good visibility at intersections is vital. In Denmark vehicles are not allowed to park closer than 10 meters/33 feet from an intersection for this very reason. The widespread American practice of allowing cars to “turn right on red” at intersections is unthinkable in cities that want to invite people to walk and bicycle.

The volume of bicycle traffic is one of the most significant safety factors for making bicycle systems safe. The more bicycles there are, the more it forces drivers to watch out for bicyclists and be constantly on guard. There is a considerable positive effect when bicycle traffic reaches a reasonable “critical mass.”

A Comfortable Network

It is also relevant to mention comfort and amenity value in terms of bicycle networks. Bicycle trips can be pleasant, interesting and free of unnecessary irritations, or they can be boring and difficult. Many of the criteria for good places to walk can be transferred to bicycle routes. It is important for bicycles to have enough room so that they won’t be pushed or crowded. Bicycle paths in Copenhagen vary in width from 1.7 to 4 meters/5.5 to 13 feet, with 2.5 meters/8.2 feet as the recommended minimum.

As bicycle traffic is gradually developed into a versatile, popular transport system, many new and wider bicycles appear on the street scene. These include three-wheeled transport bicycles for children and goods, handicap bicycles and bicycle taxis. All of these transport options require room, and senior bikers as well as the many parents who transport their children by bicycle need increased reassurance that they won’t be pushed and crowded. As bicycle traffic successfully develops  as an alternative transport system, more room is needed. Despite the new demands for more room, the bicycle continues to be the superior means of wheeled transport, which requires the smallest amount of room per person in the streets of the city.

A study conducted in Copenhagen in 2005 concluded that one of the city’s most pressing problems was heavy congestion on bicycle paths. The city council has since adopted an expansion of the width of bicycle paths in the most popular streets and is currently carrying out this policy.

Frequent interruptions are irritating and destroy the rhythm of the bicycle trip. Over the years Copenhagen has introduced several solutions to reduce the problem. Bicycle paths are often carried across minor side streets without interruption, which results in bicycle trips with fewer interruptions and lets drivers know they must wait. Introducing green waves for bicycles on selected street helps correspondingly to reduce irritating stops. In order to create these green bicycle waves, stoplights are set so that when bicycles bike at about 20 km/h (12.4 mph) they need not stop when they bike to and from the city during rush hour. That service used to be provided for cars. Another form of comfort and safety for bicyclists in Copenhagen is the city practice of snow removal. The bicycle lanes are always cleared before driving lanes to emphasize bicycle priority and the invitation to bike — despite the season.

Bicycle Cities and City Bicycles

In recent years, many cities have introduced various types of city bicycles that can be borrowed or rented from stands or depots. The idea is to reinforce bicycle traffic by making it easier for people to use bicycles for short trips in the city, while providing a collective bicycle system so that individuals do not need to buy, store and repair their own bicycles. Amsterdam’s white bicycle bike-share system came and disappeared quickly from the street scene in the 1970s. More stable and well organized systems were established in the 1990s, in Copenhagen, for example. Today Copenhagen has 2,000 city bicycles available at 110 bicycle stations in the city center. The bicycles are free, financed by advertisements. Users pay a coin deposit, which is returned when the borrowed bicycle is returned to one of the official bicycle racks. Copenhagen’s city bikes are used primarily by tourists, who can bicycle around town easily and safely, thanks to the well developed bicycle network. Copenhageners rarely borrow city bicycles, because they prefer their own bikes. In brief, the principle underlying city bikes in Copenhagen  is to enable inexperienced city bicyclists to ride around in a relatively safe bicycling environment.

City bike programs have by now been introduced in numerous European cities. In Paris, the pattern of use is different from that in Copenhagen. Under the Vélib program, city bicycles are used primarily by Parisians themselves. By renting a Vélib by the hour, week or year, they are able to ride a bike without the trouble of storing and maintaining it. The bicycle rental companies handle the bother in return for the rental fees they charge the bicyclists.

The idea of offering bicycles to bor- row or rent has spread rapidly (Lyon, France).

During 2008 the Vélib system in Paris was expanded to comprise 20,000 rental bikes parked in about 1,500 bicycle racks. In a very short time the Vélib bicycles have become a well-used service, primarily for short trips: 18 minutes on average. Here the idea is to enable many more or less experienced  bicyclists acquainted with the locality to bicycle in a network that is neither very safe nor well developed. Although there have been a number of accidents, the program has had the valuable result that more people now bicycle in Paris — on rental bikes and personal bikes. In only one year the number of trips on personal bicycles has doubled, an increase that has doubtless been inspired and reinforced by the bicycle traffic on the new Vélib bicycles. The Vélib bicycles accounted for one-third of all bicycle trips in Paris in 2008, and bicycles in total accounted for between 2 percent and 3 percent of all traffic in Paris.

Inspired by the development in Paris, among other cities, many new city bicycle systems are underway at this time, also in cities that have essentially no bicycle infrastructure or bicycle culture. The idea seems to be that easily accessible city bikes can kick-start development of more bicycle cities on the principle that first you send people out on city bicycles and then you gradually develop comfortable, safe bicycle networks. There are good reasons to be cautious about sending inexperienced bicyclists out on two wheels in cities where bicycle traffic and networks do not have the critical mass to allow city bikes to reinforce ongoing development. Bicycle traffic and traffic safety must be taken seriously, and experiences from good bicycle cities incorporated, before experimenting with cheap bicycle campaigns. City bikes must be a link in efforts to build and reinforce bicycle culture — not the spearhead.

On the Way to a New Bicycle Culture

A number of cities, particularly in Scandinavia, Germany and Holland have witnessed a considerable development in bicycle use in recent years. The number of bicyclists and bicycle trips grows gradually as it becomes more practical and safe to bicycle. Biking simply becomes the way to get around town. Bicycle traffic changes gradually from being a small group of death-defying bicycle enthusiasts to being a wide popular movement comprising all age groups and layers of society from members of Parliament and mayors to pensioners and school children.

Bicycle traffic changes character dramatically in the process. When there are many bicycles and many children and seniors among them, the tempo is more stately and safe for all parties. Racing bicycles and Tour de France gear is replaced  by more comfortable family bicycles and ordinary clothing. Cycling moves from being a sport and test of survival to being a practical way to get around town — for everyone.

This shift in culture from fast slalom bicycle trips between cars and many infringements of traffic regulations to a law-abiding stream of children, young people and seniors bicycling in a well-defined bicycle network has a big impact on society’s perception of bicycle traffic as a genuine alternative and reasonable supplement to other forms of transport. The shift in culture also brings bicycles more in line with pedestrians and city life in general, and is one more reason that bicycles have a natural place in this book about city life.

In New York City 300 km/180 miles of new bicycle paths were built from 2007 to 2009. A comprehensive program to introduce the idea of bicycling to New Yorkers was instituted at the same time. Car free “summer streets” are arranged in the summer months, so that residents of the city can experience the delights of walking and bicycling in comfort (Park Avenue, Manhattan, summer 2009).

Cities are wonderfully innovative in their efforts to strengthen a broader bicycle culture and demonstrate that bicycles are an obvious choice for almost everyone. Schools offer intensive bicycle training, companies and institutions compete to have the highest percentage of bicyclists among their employees, and information campaigns, bicycle weeks and car-free days are held. Many cities now open bicycle streets on Sunday in campaigns to develop bicycle culture. Sunday is a particularly good day for two reasons: car traffic is usually limited and people usually have more time for exercise and experiences. The idea of closing city streets to car traffic, turning them into temporary bicycle streets instead, has been popular in Central and South America for years. The extensive “Ciclovia” program in Bogotà, Columbia is one of the best known and best developed initiatives of this kind. In the post-millennium years, the idea of reinforcing bicycle traffic has spread to more and more of those cities where cars have dominated planning for decades.

Ambitious strategies have been developed to establish extensive bicycle networks in the large Australian cities Melbourne and Sydney. Planners in both cities are hard at work laying out new bicycle lanes and moving existing lanes away from traffic and into safer “Copenhagen-style bicycle lanes” where bicycles move inside the rows of parked cars. New York City planners are working on a new traffic plan that will make NYC one of the world’s most sustainable metropolises.

New York City’s building density, flat terrain and wide streets provide good opportunities for converting car traffic to bicycle traffic, and a new bicycle network of 3,000 km/1,800 miles of bike lanes is planned for the city’s five boroughs: Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Work on the new bicycle lanes started in 2007 and already in the course of 2007 – 2008 about one-quarter of the planned bicycle lanes have been established and significant growth in bicycle traffic is evident. In New York the idea of closing streets to car traffic on Sundays, which NYC calls “summer streets,” was introduced in 2008 as a popular link to the efforts to develop a new bicycle culture.

In the future, concern about sustainability, climate change and health will most certainly mean that increasingly more cities, like New York City, will double their efforts to develop a new culture for city life and movement. Increased bicycle traffic is an obvious answer to many of the problems cities struggle with worldwide.

Bicycles play an important role for transport and mobility in many developing countries.

Bicycling in Economically Developing Countries

Bicycle traffic already plays a key role in the overall traffic picture in many cities in economically developing countries. However, bicycle traffic is typically given poor and dangerous conditions. People bicycle by necessity, and individual mobility is often a prerequisite for being able to get to work and earn a living. In many cities bicycles or bicycle rickshaws handle the lion’s share of goods and people transport. Dhaka in Bangladesh has 12 million inhabitants, and the city’s 400,000 bicycle rickshaws ensure cheap sustainable transport as well as providing a modest but vital income to upwards of one million people.

Many of the cities that actually have extensive bicycle traffic today unfortunately also have forces at work to reduce bicycle traffic in favor of more room for vehicular traffic. In Dhaka, for example, bicycle taxis are considered a problem for the ongoing development of the city. Small motorcycles have replaced bicycles in many cities in Indonesia and Vietnam. Only a few decades ago, large Chinese cities were world famous for their volume of bicyclists, today bicycle traffic has in many cities almost disappeared from the street scene due to traffic reprioritization or even direct bans on bicycles.

In this category of cities, giving bicycle traffic a higher priority needs to be a key ingredient in a policy aimed to effectively utilize street space, reduce energy consumption and pollution, and provide mobility for the great majority of people who cannot afford cars. In addition, investing in bicycle infrastructure is affordable in comparison with other types of traffic investment.

New direction and reprioritizing of city policy is underway throughout the world. Fortunately, this includes prioritizing bicycle traffic in many cities in economically developing countries such as Mexico City and Bogota, Columbia.

Bike-sharing users might be safer because they take fewer risks while riding. These two women trying out Boulder's new bike-sharing system don't look like daredevils. Photo: dgrinbergs via Flickr

People riding shared public bicycles appear to be involved in fewer traffic crashes and receive fewer injuries than people riding their personal bicycles. In cities from Paris and London to Washington, D.C. and Mexico City, something about riding a shared bicycle appears to make cycling safer.

Paris’s Vélib’ is perhaps the most iconic bike-sharing system in the world. Launched in 2007 with 20,000 bikes, its widespread popularity not only transformed how Parisians traveled across their city but set off an explosion of new bike-sharing systems worldwide. With a few years of practice at this point, the Parisian experience is particularly telling.

“The accident rate is lower on a Vélib’ than on ‘normal’ bikes,” a spokesperson for the office of Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë told Streetsblog. In 2009, the most recent year for which data is available, Vélib’ riders were responsible for one-third of all bike trips in Paris but were involved in only one-fourth of all traffic crashes involving a bicycle.

The numbers are if anything more striking in London, where the Barclays Cycle Hire system — or “Boris Bikes,” to borrow the phrase locals have adopted in honor of their mayor, Boris Johnson — opened at the end of last July. Though the London government didn’t track the relevant safety stats of bike-share users compared to other cyclists, they provided us with the data to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations.

So far, after 4.5 million trips, no bike-sharing user in London has been seriously injured or killed in a traffic crash, according to Transport for London. Only 10 bike-sharing users were injured at all in the first 1.6 million trips on the system, a statistic that was compiled earlier. A spokesperson also told Streetsblog that they estimate that half a million bike trips take place across London each day, 20,000 of which are on Boris Bikes. Finally, during 2010, 10 people were killed, 457 seriously injured and 3,540 non-seriously injured while cycling in London.

Crunching those numbers, no people were seriously injured or killed on the first 4.5 million trips on Boris Bikes, while about 12 people are injured for every 4.5 million trips on personal bikes. And over 1.6 million trips, ten bike-sharing users received non-serious injuries, compared to an average of 35 such injuries for the same number of trips on personal bikes.

Stateside, transportation officials are seeing the same effect.

Chris Holben, the project manager for Washington D.C.’s Capital Bikeshare system, told the Boston Globe in May that bike-sharing users had a much safer rate of crashes than bike owners. He told Streetsblog that his observation was merely anecdotal, but it turns out that his instincts are likely correct.

In its first seven months of operation, Capital Bikeshare users made 330,000 trips. In that time, seven crashes of any kind were reported, and none involved serious injuries. In comparison, there were 338 cyclist injuries and fatalities overall in 2010, according to the District Department of Transportation, with an estimated 28,400 trips per weekday, 5,000 of which take place on a Capital Bikeshare bikes.

So while only seven bike-sharing riders were injured in 330,000 trips, on average, 13 people riding personal bikes are injured over the same number of trips. And bike-sharing riders suffered no serious injuries, while riders using their own bikes suffered injuries that were sometimes serious or even fatal.

In other systems, apples-to-apples comparisons with personal bike riders are impossible, but extremely low injury rates among bike-sharing riders still stand out.

In Mexico City, for example, only three ECOBICI riders have required a trip to the hospital after a traffic crash in the 1.6 million trips taken so far. That’s an impressive safety record in a city known for its dangerous traffic. Mexico City does not, however, compile the necessary data to accurately compare the ECOBICI safety rate with that of other cyclists, said a representative of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, which provided technical assistance on the city’s bike-sharing program.

Similarly, Minneapolis’s NiceRide system reported “no significant accidents or major injuries” in its first year of operation. In that time, Minnesotans took 37,000 NiceRide trips.

This is encouraging news for cities like New York that are eyeing bike-sharing systems of their own. Some have worried that bike-sharing would bring a flood of inexperienced new cyclists onto roads that are too dangerous, but if New York’s experience is anything like that of its peers, cycling will be safer overall once shared bikes are added to the mix.

Bike-sharing users are struck and injured less often than people on their personal bikes. One theory is that they're more likely to stick to safe routes like this one in London. Photo: d1v1d via Flickr

For now, we can only speculate as to the reasons for this phenomenon. Streetsblog spoke with two experts on road safety, Professors Norman Garrick of the University of Connecticut and Ian Walker of the University of Bath. Each offered a number of possible explanations for the discrepancy in safety numbers.

“It’s shorter trips, maybe,” proposed Garrick. If bike-sharing users are generally taking trips of less than thirty minutes so as to avoid additional fees, each trip might be fewer miles, leading to a lower crash rate per trip.

Walker hypothesized that bike-sharing users might be less experienced riders than those who own their own bike. “They therefore avoid mixing with traffic as much as regular riders, and ride slower, and so have fewer serious collisions,” he theorized. That might be easier to achieve if bike-sharing stations are sited near bike lanes, added Garrick.

Garrick said that even apart from experience in cycling, people who have avoided cycling until bike-sharing presents them with the option might be, by their nature, less tolerant of risk and stick to safer cycling behavior. “It could be that they’re more cautious people.”

Or the other case may be true, said Walker — bike-share users could be more dedicated cyclists with an above-average skill level. “Most people don’t hire bikes from such a scheme, suggesting that the people who do hire from them might be those with a greater than average interest in cycling.” That could be especially true of the tourists taking them out, who might not have brought their own bike along with them.

The physical qualities of the shared bikes themselves might be responsible for their increased safety. “They are slower and they are very visible,” said Garrick.

That visibility might help motorists not only notice the bike-sharing user, but respect her as well, said Walker. “I suspect they are also, in most people’s minds, a sign of a novice or occasional cyclist. As such, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if drivers took more care around people using them than they do around ‘professional’ looking cyclists.” Walker’s own research has shown that drivers passed cyclists more closely if they were wearing helmets or appeared to be male.

Significantly more research will be needed to determine which combination of these factors actually explains the better safety record of bike-sharing users. But in the meantime, cities with bike-sharing systems on the horizon should be pleased to hear that the program will likely be a boon for street safety.

Anyone who claims that bike-sharing is a European-style transportation innovation has clearly never set foot in Hangzhou, China. The 50,000-bike system in this southern China city of almost 7 million people (about 1.5 million people fewer than New York City) blows all other bike-shares off the map. As Bradley Schroeder of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy said, “I don’t think there is anywhere you can stand in Hangzhou for more than a minute or two where you wouldn’t have a Hangzhou Public Bike go past you.”

Hangzhou’s 2,050 bike-share stations are spaced less than a thousand feet from each other in the city center, and on an average day riders make 240,000 trips using the system. Its popularity and success have set a new standard for bike-sharing in Asia. And the city is far from finished. The Hangzhou Bicycle Company plans to expand the bike-share system to 175,000 bikes by 2020.

A Bike-and-Roll rental station in front of the Hyatt Regency at Market and Spear.

I’ve been bicycling in San Francisco since the late 1970s so I vividly remember when almost all bicyclists could recognize each other on the streets of the city. There really weren’t that many of us even as recently as the beginning of the 1990s, just two decades ago. We’ve come a long way, and one of the less recognized aspects of this bicycling boom has been the incredible expansion of bike rentals and bicycling tourism.

I wrote a flyer back in 1986 calling for a “City of Panhandles” and one of the arguments I made in that largely unnoticed document was that a systematic effort to provide safe, separate bikeways crisscrossing the City would itself lead to a tourism boom. As it turns out, we’re experiencing a dramatic increase in tourists cycling even before we provide adequate infrastructure. San Francisco is just an incredibly beautiful place, and people come from all over the world to experience its beauty. Growing numbers of those visitors aren’t much interested in seeing it through windshields and are opting instead (or in addition) to rent bicycles.

There are three “big” companies doing bike rentals in SF: Bike and Roll, Blazing Saddles, and Bay City Bikes (a number of smaller places, like the BikeHut at Pier 40, also rent bikes). I recently spoke with Darryll White, owner of Bike and Roll, and he gave me some impressive aggregate numbers. Since 1995 the local bicycle rental business has grown from about $500,000 a year to over $10 million! The remarkable thing about this huge increase in tourist cycling is that about 90 percent of the rentals are heading to the Golden Gate Bridge and to Sausalito, where the City Council has erupted into battles over bike parking vs. car parking, even pondering charging fees to touring bicyclists. The Golden Gate Ferry service keeps at least four of its ferry runs going to accommodate the cycling tourists, which have hit peaks of 2,500 per day during recent summer months.

Blazing Saddles rents bikes and go-carts from its Hyde Street facility near Fisherman's Wharf.

This past Wednesday I was buying food at the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market in UN Plaza and lo and behold, a mini-mass of 9 cyclists went rolling by on Market, heading westward. All of them were on Bike and Roll bikes, and I stopped to marvel at the sight. Imagine if there was a dedicated bikeway up Market that connected cyclists all the way to the Pacific Ocean? Talk about a tourist attraction! And since it would go right by the Haight-Ashbury, the museums in the park, as well as the Civic Center, imagine how heavily trafficked by cyclists from out of town this will be.

As it happens the SF Bike Coalition is now promoting a plan to Connect The City, a version of crosstown bikeways, including a dedicated bikeway that runs from the Embarcadero to the Pacific Ocean by way of Market Street, the Wiggle, and Golden Gate Park. It’s a wonder that the politically powerful tourism industry hasn’t thrown their weight behind it yet. The bicycle renaissance going on across the world has an important connection to San Francisco (Critical Mass was born here in 1992) and thousands of cyclists come here for the beauty, the food, and the politics. If San Francisco were creating dedicated bikeways, and presenting itself as a bicycling capital, tourism from near and far would only increase that much more.

The big three maintain a fleet of approximately 3500-4000 bikes and employ on average one mechanic per 100 bikes to keep those bikes rolling. New bike shops continue to open around town, showcasing the bicycle as one of the few growing business sectors that doesn’t require its workers to sit in front of computers all day, mining pixels. Commuters, messengers, and recreational riders have already radically expanded the use of our common public space by bicycles during the last twenty years. The challenge now is to really redesign the city’s streets to make safe, horticulturally and artistically designed bikeways as common as thoroughfares for cars. I’m not a big fan of capitalism or business, but it’s pretty obvious that if we build a beautiful system of bike boulevards, bicyclists will come to ride them by the tens of thousands. When they do, they spend a lot of money and keep a lot of our local economy going.

What could be simpler? Transform a citywide network of streets to promote daily bicycling, promote it to the global tourism industry, and get ready for the boom, doubling and tripling the huge expansion we’ve already seen. It would create good, local jobs to remake the streets (design, reconstruction, gardening, maintenance), more to accommodate the increase in local cycling (retail stores, rentals, bikesharing facilities, workshops), and then a further increase as the tourists pour in to cycle across San Francisco’s beautiful landscape (tour guides, rentals, mechanics, restaurants, hotels, cafes)… Whatever diminishing of car and gasoline sales might occur would be more than made up for by an ecologically healthy, economically relocalized, bicycle-centric boom that increases San Francisco’s global profile as a trendsetter and a tourist destination.

Montreal's Bixi bike-sharing system. Photo: Denis-Carl Robidoux via Flickr.

Interest in New York City’s bike-sharing plans seems to be running high in the industry, if today’s “pre-proposal conference” is any indication. A packed room that included many of the major players in the bike-sharing industry gathered at NYC DOT headquarters to get the scoop on what New York, potentially the nation’s largest bike-sharing market, is looking for.

In attendance were at least three of the largest bike-sharing operators: JCDecaux, Public Bike System, and B-cycle. JCDecaux made bike-sharing famous with the very large and very popular Vélib system in Paris. Public Bike System runs Montréal’s Bixi system, as well as providing the equipment for the new systems in Washington D.C. and Minneapolis. B-cycle is a bit newer to the scene, running Denver’s system and the Chicago bike-sharing pilot. The other big bike-sharing company is advertiser ClearChannel; after looking over the sign-in sheet and making some rounds in the audience of over 60, I couldn’t confirm whether they sent a representative.

Just because a firm attended this morning’s conference doesn’t mean they’ll be submitting a bid. (“No comment,” said a Public Bike System rep when asked about his plans.) They might still be making up their minds, gleaning information to help them decide, or just keeping up with the state of the industry.

Other kinds of companies were in attendance too. Firms like Mastercard and electronics manufacturer LG might have been more interested in sponsorship opportunities, for example. Bike manufacturer Worksman Cycles could have an interest in supplying the bikes themselves.

The conference itself didn’t reveal much that wasn’t in the city’s RFP, but it was noteworthy how insistent DOT officials were that the 10,000 bike number that’s been thrown about is merely one option. “There is no number. There is no geographical area,” said one DOT rep. The actual range that bidders propose could be smaller or larger than the suggestion in the RFP of 10,000 bikes concentrated in Manhattan below 60th Street and parts of northwest Brooklyn. Hopefully the strong interest on display today will push bidders toward even larger systems in an effort to win the contract.

Minneapolis's bike-share system has only had two stolen bikes, and not just because people there are Minnesota nice. Theft and vandalism haven't been a problem for any American bike-sharing system. Photo: Kevin Jack via Flickr.

Even as bike-sharing spreads across the United States, it remains dogged by one persistent doubt. Critics, and even some boosters, fear that the bikes will be routinely stolen and vandalized. It’s time to stop worrying about crime, however. In America’s new bike-sharing systems, there have been essentially no such problems.

Fears that public bikes will be abused can be traced to Paris’s Vélib system, which while wildly popular has struggled with high levels of theft and vandalism. Take Michael Grynbaum’s write-up of New York City’s bike-share plans in the Times, where crime is portrayed as the only downside:

In Paris, the pioneer of bike-sharing, the bikes are used up to 150,000 times a day. But there has also been widespread theft and vandalism; bicycles have ended up tossed in the Seine, dangling from lampposts and shipped off to northern Africa for illegal sale.

The scenes of Vélib bike abuse replicate descriptions widely circulated in a 2009 BBC story about the system’s troubles. The problems with Vélib are real, if overhyped by the media. In 2009, JCDecaux, the advertising agency that runs Vélib, estimated that over 8,000 bikes were stolen and another 8,000 rendered unrideable and irreparable. It was a problem that had to be addressed.

Luckily for the rest of the world, it seems to have been an easy fix for other cities. Many now believe that the locking mechanism at Vélib’s stations was poorly designed. Systems that use a different method have successfully controlled theft to the point where the cost is negligible.

Vélib bikes lock on the side of the frame, as seen here. Other operators, including ClearChannel, B-cycle and the Public Bike System, have had dramatically lower rates of theft and use a different locking method, explained Bill Dossett, who runs Minneapolis’s new NiceRide bike-sharing system. “The ClearChannel systems had the locking mechanism built into the headset,” where the handlebars meet the bicycle frame, “and just has never had the same problems,” he said.

For example, Barcelona’s Bicing system, run by ClearChannel, has had about one-fifth the rate of stolen public bikes as Vélib, despite higher theft rates citywide, according to the New York Department of City Planning.

Stateside, the problems with crime have been smaller still.

“Theft and vandalism hasn’t been a big problem with either of our two systems,” said Jim Sebastian, who runs Washington D.C.’s bike and pedestrian programs. Under D.C.’s old SmartBike system, which opened in 2008, only one bike was ever stolen, and that was when a rider left it unsecured. Under the new and larger Capital Bikeshare system, which launched in September with about 1,100 bikes, they’ve lost fewer than five bikes, Sebastian said.

“We did have some vandalism at the beginning,” added Sebastian. “People test the limits at first, basically.” That’s died down now that the program is up and running, he said. “There’s nothing that hampers the operation of the system.”

Sebastian said there’s no trick to keeping the bikes safe. “Just making it difficult to get the bikes out of the rack,” is the key, he said.

In Minneapolis, again, theft and vandalism simply haven’t materialized as problems. The operators expected to lose around ten percent of their bikes to crime in the first year, but so far, that figure has only turned out to be 0.3 percent.

With 700 bikes on the streets since June, said Dossett, only two bikes have disappeared. Vandalism has been minimal: There have been a few bikes that were graffitied, a few tires slashed, and one incident in which a motorist hit a bike-sharing station and shattered some glass. “That’s been $5,000 worth of damage,” he said. “I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any system that operates any equipment in the public sphere with that low a damage rate.”

Dossett agreed that good locking mechanisms are key, and also urged New York to create some community pride in the bike-sharing project. “You want people to see this as a local initiative and as something that’s got everybody’s health in mind,” he said. “Then people won’t want to lash out against it.”

The story’s the same in Denver, where bikes are all equipped with a GPS device that can be used for tracking and security purposes. So far there hasn’t been much need to recover stolen bikes. “We’ve had one bike stolen since we launched on April 22,” said Parry Burnap, executive director of Denver Bike Sharing. “One bike damaged, someone tried to scrape the logos off.”

There was also one incident in which a number of bikes had their tires slashed, as did all the cars in the neighborhood. “And that’s it,” said Burnap. “We’ve made no claims on our insurance policy, so that’s really an indicator of the low level of damage we’ve gotten.”

Paris bike sharing program Velib. Flicr photo: Gilles Couteau

Getting to work or school in the Bay Area by shared bicycle could be a reality soon, as the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the Bay Area’s regional transportation planning body, awarded more than $4 million to a regional bike share program as part of $33 million for a host of innovative projects around the Bay Area meant to reduce driving and curb emissions.

The MTC has made a small but significant first step in addressing the greenhouse gas reduction targets mandated under SB375 and AB32. MTC Executive Director Steve Heminger acknowledged the connection between funding innovative pilots and the 15 percent per capita greenhouse gas reduction target adopted by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for the Bay Area by 2035.

In his routine report to commissioners, Heminger said the MTC was the last of the four major municipal planning organizations to adopt the SB375 Sustainable Communities Strategies targets, so they had “the luxury of learning from everyone else’s mistakes.” Still, he argued, “we are off to the races.”

Today’s $33 million in Climate Initiatives Program grants go to projects that were ranked based on cost and benefit analysis, as well as potential for innovation. The regional bike share program piggybacks off the Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority (VTA) bike share pilot, which has been in development for more than a year. VTA secured a $500,000 grant from Regional Measure 2′s Safe Routes to Transit program to fund design and capital costs for an initial deployment of approximately 100 bikes. VTA had convened a working group and a feasibility study and had enlisted the support of private sector employers, such as Google, Apple, Adobe and Cisco.

“VTA is committed to smart, sustainable strategies that invest in the urban cores and transit corridors that promote walking, bicycling and transit,” said VTA Board Chair and San Jose City Council M ember Sam Liccardo.  “The pilot bike-share program will make the commute for Santa Clara County residents greener and more affordable.”

With the $4.29 million MTC grant announced today, the program will increase to approximately 1,000 bicycles at up to 100 kiosk stations, including nearly 500 bikes at 50 kiosks in San Francisco and the remaining 500 at Caltrain stations in Redwood City, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and San Jose. The VTA will coordinate with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), SamTrans, San Mateo County and Redwood City. The total project cost is approximately $7 million with $1.4 million in funding provided by the BAAQMD and $1.3 million in funding from the other partners.

“Bike sharing that works regionally as well as in San Francisco will provide greater connectivity and make the system more useful,” said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. “As bicycling increases in San Francisco and the Bay Area, key projects like this will encourage others to add bicycling to their travel solutions.”

In the Bay Area, the transportation sector accounts for more than 50 percent of air pollution. While smaller bike share programs in the United States have failed to transform their host cities like Paris’ Velib or Barcelona’s Bicing programs, U.S. cities have been jumping at the opportunity to add publicly accessible bicycles to their transit profile.

“The SFMTA is proud to work with its regional partners on this important effort to increase bicycling,” said SFMTA CEO Nat Ford. “Services like bike sharing will strengthen San Francisco’s and the region’s sustainable transportation network.”

Because the program is now regional, VTA’s initial timeline to implement bike sharing in 2010 has been pushed back significantly. According to VTA spokesperson Brandi Childress, the program would likely not go online until early to mid 2012. Despite this, said Childress, the VTA and its partners believe they can address the last-mile problem with bicycles, thus eliminating the situation where core transit lines are often just far enough from people’s homes that driving appears to be a more convenient option, even for those seeking to minimize their environmental footprint.

“Innovative programs like bike-sharing solve the problem for those people who want to take transit but can’t quite make that last mile or so of the transit trip work for them,” said Childress. “That connection and confidence needs to be there to make public transportation more competitive to the automobile.”

A website developed by Oliver O'Brien maps bike-share systems in real time. London's full bike-share stations are represented here by red dots and empty stations by blue dots.

A fantastic new visualization of 16 bike-share systems around the world lets you see how people are using public bikes from London to Melbourne. You can watch animated graphics, for example, of bikes getting picked up in one part of town and dropped off in another during rush hour. The site, created by Oliver O’Brien, a researcher at University College London, also lets you compare bike-share usage from city to city.

While a few American cities have made big strides in bike-sharing this year, with Denver, Minneapolis, and Washington D.C. all committing to systems with 500 or more bikes, O’Brien’s site indicates that people aren’t using them very much. These systems occupy a middle ground between totally impractical pilot projects and the more robust bike-share networks that have recently sprouted in major European and Asian cities. For bike-sharing to take off here, improvements like increased station density, better bike infrastructure, and interoperability with transit systems will probably be necessary.

In cities with large-scale systems and densely clustered stations, huge numbers of people get around on shared bikes. For example, as of 1:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon (Eastern Standard Time), 1,342 bikes were checked out from Barcelona’s Bicing system. At the day’s peak point, 2,425 Bicing bikes were in use all at once, out of a total of around 5,000.

In contrast, D.C.’s new Capital Bikeshare program had only 23 bikes out at 1:30, with 50 in use at the day’s peak. Nice Ride in Minneapolis had only five bikes in use, with a high for the day of 26. The two systems had a total of 648 and 588 shared bikes at all of their stations, respectively. Over the course of the day, that adds up to fairly marginal ridership. Denver’s usage rates, too, were quite low.

So what’s standing in the way of American bike-share success? One factor offered by bike-sharing consultant Paul DeMaio is that Americans need some time to get used to bike-sharing. D.C.’s system is just a month old today, he noted, and not even fully built out, while Denver’s opened in the spring and Minneapolis’s in the summer. That said, London’s Barclays Cycle Hire system launched at the end of July, but yesterday had a high of 815 bikes in use at once, according to O’Brien’s site.

“Enough cannot be said about scale,” said Michael Kodransky, a research associate with the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. “Station density is key.”

At this point, D.C.'s Capital Bikeshare program is far smaller and less-used than leading bike-sharing systems.

The more places to pick up and drop off a shared bike, the closer people can get to their ultimate destinations, and the more useful the system will be for riders.

Paris’s Vélib system has 20,000 bikes at 1,450 stations, with stations an average of 300 meters apart in the city center. As Greater Greater Washington has noted, for D.C. to reach that level of bike-sharing saturation, it would need around 5,400 bikes in its system. That’s an order of magnitude more than what the system provides today.

DeMaio agreed that increased station density would greatly boost bike-sharing ridership and called on government — federal, state, and local — to help fund full-scale programs. The D.C. area applied for a TIGER II grant to add 3,000 more bikes to its bike-share program, he said, but learned yesterday that it wasn’t picked as a winner.

Kodransky also highlighted the importance of interoperability between mass transit and bike-sharing systems. “In Paris, you use the Navigo card on mass transit and then when you get off, you slap it on the bike-sharing station and ride,” he explained. That makes bike-sharing feel as integrated with transit as, say, New York City’s subways and buses.

Finally, Kodransky said that many American cities lack the well-developed bike infrastructure that other cities boast, which keeps people off bikes, shared or otherwise.

Bike-sharing has the potential to be a game-changer for cycling in American cities, if we get it right. But if ridership remains anemic because the system is too spread out, the lack of use will become an arrow in the quiver of bike-share critics. Incremental progress can be made, of course — Capital Bikeshare was preceded by the pilot program SmartBike DC, which only had 10 stations and an average of 77 to 163 total trips per day — but as London is showing right now, starting off big is the best way to prove the concept works.

Photo: slimmer_jimmer

Editor’s note: This is the second part in an occasional series of dispatches from Europe from Leah Shahum, the executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, who is on sabbatical there.

I’ve visited Paris four times in the past 25 years, but it was not until a recent trip a few weeks ago that I really saw this fabled city the way I wanted to. For that, I credit bicycling and Paris’ much-publicized Vélib’ bikeshare program. On two wheels, I was able to move beyond the total tourist track to explore neighborhoods and find nooks and crannies filled with local cafes and funky shops that were not listed in my guidebook.

Much has been written about Paris Vélib’. Started in 2007, it is now the second-largest bikesharing system in the world with about 25,000 bikes spread among 1,800 stations. (It is second in size to the 50,000-bike program in Hangzou, China.) Since Vélib’ began just three years ago, it has provided about 80 million bicycle trips in Paris.

While Vélib’ has incited some criticism over vandalism and theft problems, the overwhelming story so far seems to be one of success. The system has helped coax more Parisians back onto bikes and has convinced local leaders to build out an impressive and growing bicycling infrastructure that, in turn, has encouraged even more Parisians to try bicycling for transportation. Not to mention that it has launched a worldwide race by other cities eager to replicate its success.

When I arrived in Paris a few weeks ago, I had not done much homework about the actual mechanics of using the Vélib’ system. While I wanted to check it out, frankly, I was skeptical that this media-darling system would work as well as advertised.

My Vélib’ experience wildly exceeded my expectations and has helped me realize that politicians’ fervor for bikesharing can transcend the flash to achieve substance. I believe it is worth the time and energy for San Francisco and other North American cities to invest in similar systems.

Photo: Stephane de Luca

For our first ride, we started out after spotting a Vélib’ station just a block from our hotel in a central Left Bank neighborhood. Looking at a map, I saw another half-dozen pods within a short walk, just in case our home base was ever empty (when we wanted to check out bikes) or full (when we wanted to return them). There are Vélib’ stations roughly every 300 meters throughout Paris – and they really did seem to me to be everywhere. This extensive coverage is critical to its success, as I found out.

Sitting at a café across the street, we watched three different groups check in or out of the bikeshare pod. I felt encouraged and sauntered over to give it a try. Fortunately, the instructions are in English as well as French and other languages. The first half hour is free, with increasing charges for additional periods of use. When we ran into a few minor bumps while signing up on-site, a friendly British couple, also trying out the bikes during their weekend holiday in Paris, helped us out.

Once we understood what to do, we slipped in the credit card and were off!

The first thing I noticed as we started riding was how comfortable and user-friendly the bikes are. The three gears shifted smoothly; the brakes worked well; the seat was comfy; and my growing number of shopping bags fit into the front basket or dangled from the up-swept handlebars. I particularly liked the power-generated light on the back and the bright front light.

I’ve always been skeptical about how “universal” bikeshare frames are. But the same bikes comfortably fit both me at 5’3” and my partner at 6’3”. And these bikes felt brand new to me, hardly like the non-stop workhorses that they actually are. Sure, I wouldn’t want to go touring in the mountains for days straight on them, but these bikes were more than adequate for basic city cruising.

I was also surprised how much closer things actually are in Paris by bike than they appeared on my big, somewhat overwhelming map. Those long Paris blocks can be daunting on foot, and as extensive and efficient as Paris’ Metro system is, it still entails a lot of tiring steps up and down and more time spent traveling or waiting underground than actually seeing the city’s sights. As much as I love walking to explore a new city – and in so many ways, walking still is the best way to explore – the bike expanded our radius of sightseeing ten-fold. A museum that would have taken us at least 15 minutes to reach by Metro turned out to be less than five minutes away by bike. And a restaurant that required two transfers by Metro was only a fifteen-minute ride away.

Given that we only had a few days in town, this had a big impact on how much we could experience.

Most excitingly to me, the bikes allowed us to go deeper than the guidebook’s directions to famous tourist sites and, instead explore all of the good stuff in between. Rather than just museum-hopping and crossing major monuments off of our list, we wanted to see what Paris neighborhoods were like.

Within a few minutes of setting out, we were riding along the Seine River with a vague destination in mind. When I looked down the river’s embankment, I was happy to see the celebrated Paris Plage (a best-practices inspiration to San Francisco’s Sunday Streets) where roads are converted to beaches and long stretches of outdoor activity free from cars for an entire summer. We locked up the bikes (they come with a thick cable lock and accompanying key), and joined the fun for half an hour.

As we pedaled away – thrilled to have lucked upon one of our destinations without even trying! – we heard interesting, live-sounding music just a few blocks away. We altered course slightly and rode into a beautiful plaza where a free outdoor concert was being set up and sound-tested for later. Recognizing a few of the performers’ names, we decided to swing back by in a few hours, when the free concert got underway.

Just then, the rain started. We quickly found Vélib’ parking pods less than a half-block away (and almost every few blocks that we looked), so it was easy to give up the bikes. We were finished pedaling for a few hours, and there was no guilt about not “getting our money’s worth,” as we ate, then shopped in a cool neighborhood we would have never found had we not been exploring by bikes.

When the sky cleared, we were full of French food and wine and had acquired a few too many shopping bags. We checked out new bikes and took a jaunt to the next fabulous new neighborhood.

After winding our way back to the free outdoor concert later that afternoon, we realized we were getting tight on time to make our dinner plans, and eating being the real highlight of any Paris trip, we skipped the rest of the show. But thanks to the bikes, I didn’t feel concerned about the time we had just invested getting to the show, as it was easy to move along. The travel time was valuable exploring time.

That night, we decided to ride Velib’ to dinner, and what a good choice it was. We had originally thought the Metro would be better, since the restaurant was across town, relatively far for a nighttime ride in a city where we didn’t know our way. But after looking at the Metro map and realizing it would have taken two transfers and a lot of time underground, we checked out another pair of bikes.

It was a longer and hillier ride than I’d expected and we did show up about 10 minutes late, but it was well worth it. Much of the ride was along the Seine, and we pedaled surprisingly close to the Eiffel Tower, which was even more impressive at night than I remembered. On the way home, we were able to take our time hanging out and snapping photos at this amazing monument, which we hadn’t expected to have time to see at night. Again, thanks to the bikes, this is one of my favorite memories from the short Paris trip.

And that was all in the first day.

From a tourist’s point of view I was wildly impressed with Paris’ bikeshare program. But as an advocate of more and better bicycling, I realize now how profound the changes a system like this can impart on a city that takes the opportunity seriously. In a city like Paris or San Francisco, when tourists are happy, city leaders are happy. And right now, thanks in part to the success of bikesharing in Paris, tourists are happier because of great bicycling opportunities.

Imagine visitors to San Francisco being able to check out a bike near their hotels downtown, cruising down Market Street, stopping off at the MOMA or Asian Art Museum, continuing along the “Wiggle” route to Golden Gate Park to explore more museums and garden, then on to the Inner Sunset for lunch. Maybe they pedal back, or maybe they decide to ditch the bikes and jump on the N-Judah to return.

There is no doubt that the “virtuous cycle” of more people being on bikes thanks to the Vélib’ program has encouraged even more people – particularly locals — to be on bikes, and so on and so on. As the number of direct beneficiaries grows, so does the political will of decision makers to dedicate more space to bicycling. The transformation in Paris is undeniable: dedicated bike space is being added at a fast pace, by any city’s standards.

This is the kind of sea change that cities such as San Francisco sorely need. We’ve only been nibbling around the edges of change. Granted those nibbles are getting progressively bigger and more popular, but they’re only bits of what we really need to help San Francisco live up to its potential as a great bicycling city.

Bikesharing could be – and should be – a next major step. Hopefully our regional transportation decision makers agree. Right now, the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) is considering a proposal to launch a multi-county bikeshare trial in San Francisco, San Jose, Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Redwood City.

The plan is smart in its aim to serve the cross-county needs of those in the Bay Area, though in my opinion, it’s still too small in scope. We won’t get where we need to go and induce a significant mode shift with a pilot of only 1,000 bikes at 100 locations.

Investing in a significant bike-share system could be the best money the region has spent in decades. In Muni’s case, how else will it move tens of thousands of people efficiently and affordably in the coming years?

Paris is not so dissimilar than San Francisco. Sure, we have more and bigger hills, but Paris is hardly flat. Geography will surely play into developing a specialized system for our city, but it’s a surmountable challenge.

On the flip side, we have far more temperate weather than our French friends. I expect our winter usage would be something they envy. And given the superiority of Paris’ Metro system, bikeshare offers to fill a much bigger transportation gap in our own city.

And, as I learned, it really is a lot of fun.

Dan Maes: Don’t count him out of Colorado gov’s race just because he’s crazy. Photo: Denver Post

It turns out that Dan Maes, an insurgent with Tea Party cred vying
for the GOP nomination, already has his sights trained on Hickenlooper’s
transportation initiatives and their sinister origins.

The week after Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Hickenlooper, and a few other guys in suits saddled up to try out Denver’s new bike-share system, B-Cycle, Maes weighed in on what this advance in transportation really means. Read all about the paranoia in the Denver Post:

Maes is warning voters that Hickenlooper’s policies,
particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are "converting Denver
into a United Nations community."

"This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed," Maes told
about 50 supporters who showed up at a campaign rally last week in
Centennial.

Maes said in a later interview that he once thought the mayor’s
efforts to promote cycling and other environmental initiatives were
harmless and well-meaning. Now he realizes "that’s exactly the attitude
they want you to have."

"This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms," Maes said.

I work in the shadow of UN global headquarters and, being an
enterprising journalist, I’ve seen a draft of this plan. It goes like
this: First they lull you into submission with the public bikes. Then
they nullify the Bill of Rights, outlaw the English language, and strip
away your American citizenship. Then they seize your SUV.

Anyway… Before you dismiss Maes as a fringe character who just
showed too much of his crazy side to gain statewide public office,
consider this. Three days ago he was edging out his competition
in the race for the GOP nomination. If he’s elected, he’ll basically
control Colorado DOT’s billion-dollar annual budget. So, all you global
government-supporting bike riders out there, there’s no guarantee this
will be a laughing matter in November.

In a surprising choice, the May edition of Bicycling Magazine named Minneapolis America’s best city for biking. The city still trails Portland, Oregon in the percentage of commuters who bike to work (4.3 percent to 5.9 percent, respectively, according to the most recent American Community Survey), but Minneapolis has been gaining momentum.

Next month, Minneapolis will launch the largest bike-share program in the country, building on a strong foundation of extensive bike trails and a thriving bicycling community.  They're also using federal funds to double the mileage of on-street bike lanes, build more road diets, introduce bicycle boulevards, and more. Have a look and see how Minneapolis has shot to the top of America's best bicycling cities.

I wish I could show you how many emails and press releases have come over the virtual Streetsblog transom, many discussing the environmental benefits of buying more crap, albeit "green" crap. I find it in poor taste to start California's "cash for appliances" rebates on one of the last days we should get up early and drive to the mall to consume. And I can't begin to tell you how tired I am of hearing the word "sustainable" bandied about to greenwash the patently unsustainable lives some of us would like to continue living.

I don't know if there is a name for people like me (don't you dare say curmudgeon!), but I feel the same thing on Valentines Day and Halloween. You shouldn't need an excuse to share love, bedeck yourself in costume or minimize your carbon footprint one day out of the year. If these values are important to you, they should be reflected in your quotidian routine.

Nonetheless, the day is awash in festivities: Some are token gestures and some are more meaningful.

In case you were wondering, Governor Schwarzenegger will celebrate Earth Day with a press conference in Milpitas, where he'll announce a new solar manufacturing facility. Mayor Newsom plans to announce as-yet-undefined environmental legislation at an early-afternoon press conference, and the region's planners have gathered in Oakland for "One Bay Area," a conference focusing on SB 375 and the need to develop the Bay Area sustainably (there's that word again). BART Police are getting out of their cars and patrolling their facilities by bicycle.

In the good-news department, TransForm was named the highest impact non-profit in the Bay Area for combating climate change today by Philanthropedia, a foundation that researches and recommends non-profits for philanthropic donations.

"We're interested in helping donors give better and directing more money to the nonprofits that are having the most impact in their sector," said Erinn Andrews, Philanthropedia's Chief Operating Officer. Andrews said they had surveyed 97 climate change experts in the Bay Area who lauded TransForm's staff and Executive Director, Stuart Cohen, for their thorough research and dynamic advocacy. "They deserve our support so they can do even more," said Andrews

"Transportation makes up 40 percent of greenhouse gases here in the Bay Area," said TransForm's Cohen. "That means to fight climate change we need to grow in a way that supports convenient communities where it is easier to walk, bike, carpool or take public transportation for more trips. Otherwise, we will not only fail to reduce emissions, but our cost of living will skyrocket."

Congratulations to TransForm and the others who rounded out Philanthropedia's top ten:

1. TransForm
2. ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability USA
3. Union of Concerned Scientists
4. Natural Resources Defense Council
5. Climate Protection Campaign
6. The Energy Foundation
7. Sierra Club
8. Communities for a Better Environment
9. Greenbelt Alliance
10. ClimateWorks Foundation
    

Among the more than 200 students present at the panel, many had made commitments to improve bicycle infrastructure on their campuses and encourage more students to ride in less-than-hospitable cities like Orlando, Florida. Mary Jean O'Malley and Zoee Turrill of Denver University have taken their 2009 commitment even further. After achieving their goal of starting a bike share program with 20 bicycles on campus at Denver University, O'Malley and Turrill worked with Regional Transportation District the non-profit Denver Bike Sharing to launch the largest public bike share program in the U.S. with up to 1,000 bikes by 2011. Denver Mayor John Hickenloper will christen Denver B-Cycle today with the opening of 50 bike share stations and 500 bicycles. Congratulations to O'Malley and Turrill for their hard work--all 365 days of the year.

So dear readers, what do you think about Earth Day? Have any fun events or good news to share? Tells us about it in the comments.