Community bicycle program

Community bicycle programs (also known as Yellow bicycle programs, White bicycle programs, bike sharing, public bike or free bike) are one element of an international movement to build environmentally friendly transportation.

Community programs appear in all shapes and sizes in cities throughout the world. The central concept is free (or nearly free) access to bicycles for inner-city transport. The goal is to reduce the use of automobiles for short trips inside the city and diminish traffic congestion, noise and air-pollution. Another goal is to reduce thefts of privately owned bicycles. [ [http://www.bikeradar.com/fitness/article/50000-rental-bikes-for-2008-beijing-olympics-12164 50,000 Rental Bikes For 2008 Beijing Olympics | BikeRadar.com ] ]

Only a few American cities, including Washington D.C. [ [http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/city-will-explore-bike-sharing-program/?hp City Will Explore Bike-Sharing Program - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog ] ] , Chapel Hill/Carrboro, NC, [http://www.recyclery.info/blue_urban_bikes] and Ft. Collins, CO [http://www.fcbikelibrary.org/] have such programs.

The bikes can be returned at any station in the system, which facilitates one way rides to work, education or shopping centres. Thus, one bike may take 10-15 rides a day with different users and can be ridden up to 10,000 km (6000 miles) a year ( this figure from the city of Lyon, France). The distance between stations is 300-400 m (1000-1300 feet) in inner city areas.

Community bicycle programs without user electronic identification struggle against theft and vandalism. In one program tried in 1993 in Cambridge, United Kingdom, all 300 bicycles were stolen on the first day of operation, and the program was abandoned.Fact|date=February 2007

In many community bicycle programs, each bicycle is painted yellow, white, or another solid colour. This is usually done for two primary reasons. First, as a fleet of coloured bicycles begin to appear around the city, it helps to get the word out about the program. Secondly, many programs paint over the brand name and other distinguishing features of the bicycle, some even going so far as to paint every component such as the pedals, shifters, and wheels. This is very helpful in deterring theft since the painted bicycle has little resale value.

Most of the more successful programs have designed their own bike with singular designs of frame and other parts to prevent disassembly and resale of stolen parts.

Types

There are many ways to provide community bicycles, but most programs are loosely based around one of the following designs:

Unregulated

In this type of program the bicycles are simply released into a city or given area. In some cases, such as a university campus, the bicycles are only designated for use within certain boundaries. Bicycles in this type of program are not intended for use by a single person. Instead, you are expected to leave the bike unlocked in a public area once you reach your destination.

In Amsterdam, the police were concerned about the possible theft of white bicycles, so a municipal ordinance was passed, requiring every bicycle in the city to be equipped with a lock. Within a week, every white bicycle sported a combination lock, with the combination painted legibly on the lock. Fact|date=September 2007 It is not known whether any of these bicycles were stolen; it is not clear what the term "stolen" would mean in this context.

Deposit

A small cash deposit releases the bike from a locked terminal and can only be retrieved by returning it to another. Since the deposit (usually one or more coins) is a fraction of the bike's cost, this does little to deter theft.

Membership

In this version of the program, bicycles are kept either at volunteer-run hubs or at self-service terminals throughout the city. Individuals registered with the program identify themselves with their membership card (or a debit card, via cell phone, etc) at any of the hubs to check out a bicycle for a short period of time, usually less than two hours. In many schemes the first half hour is free. The individual is responsible for the bike until it is returned to another hub.

Long-term checkout

These bicycles may be given free of charge, for a refundable deposit, or sold at a reduced price. They are assigned to one person who will typically keep the bike for months or years and lock it between uses. Disadvantage of this model is the much lower using frequency, around three uses per day as compared to between 10 to 15 uses per day in a bike sharing.

Advantages of long term use, or the Library Bike model, include a familiarity the rider gets with their bicycle, a mode of travel that is ready for the borrower at any time during the months of use. The bicycle can be checked out like a library book, a liability waiver can be collected at check out, and the bike can be returned anytime. A Library Bike in a person's possession can be chosen for some trips instead of a car, thus lowering car usage.This model requires less repair as the users tend to care for the bikes as their own.

Public-Private Partnership

Several European cities, including the French cities of Lyon and Paris as well as London, Barcelona and Stockholm, have signed contracts with private advertising agencies that supply the city with thousands of bicycles free of charge (or for a minor fee) for the city. In return, the agencies are allowed to advertise both on the bikes themselves and on other select locations in the city. These programs also prevent theft by requiring users to pre-purchase user cards with credit cards and by equipping the bike with complex anti-theft and bike maintenance sensors. In case of not returning the bike within a day, the bike sharing operator is allowed to withdraw money from the given credit card account.

Partnership with railway sector

In a national-level programme which combines a typical rental system with several of the above system types, a passenger railway operator or infrastructure manager partners with a national cycling organisation and others to create a system closely connected with public transport. These programs allow usually for a longer rental time of up to 24 or 48 hours and as well for tourist and round trips. See [http://www.ov-fiets.nl/ OV Fiets] for more information (in Dutch with English summary) or Call a Bike in Germany .

In some German cities, the national rail company Deutsche Bahn offers a convenient bike rental service: "Call a Bike". The Call a Bike principle is very simple, the bikes are locked electronically and again left in the open at widely distributed locations. A potential user phones an operator with the number of the bike he or she wishes to use. The operator confirms the customer's account details and tells the customer a number code that opens the lock. If desired, billing can be done directly to the users mobile phone account. The more recent Stuttgart operation requires bikes to be returned to defined locations as the users' choice of places to leave bikes off-hire can occasionally provide an opportunity to 'hide' a bike for your return trip. Bikes are also being locked to the Velib stands in Paris because no system can yet offer the option of reserving a bike for a return journey, and balancing flows can give problems as at Montmartre where special measures are needed to get bikes back to hire points at the top of the hill.

Partnership with car park operators

Some car park operators such as Vinci Park in France lend bikes to their customers who park a car. [ [http://www.vincipark.com/appli/wvncprk/wvncprkimp.nsf/(wv3srvframe)/0105-PretVelo?OpenDocument VINCI Park : réinventons le stationnement ] ]

History

An early community bicycle program was started in the 1960s by Luud Schimmelpenninck in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. This so-called White Bicycle Plan was possibly the first large-scale community bicycle program. It provided free bicycles that were supposed to be used for one trip and then left for someone else. Within a month, most of the bikes had been stolen and the rest were found in nearby canals. [ Shirky, Clay "Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations" (2008.) Penguin. pg 282-283] The program is still active in some parts of the Netherlands and other places like Helsinki and Copenhagen. It originally existed as one in a series of White Plans proposed in the street magazine PROVO.

In 1974 the French city of La Rochelle launched a free bike program featuring yellow bicycles that were free to take and use. It is regarded as one of the first successful bike sharing programs.

The City of Copenhagen launched a major bike share program in May 1995 called [http://www.bycyklen.dk/ ByCyklen] - City Bikes. This was the first large-scale urban bike share program featuring specially-designed bikes with parts that cannot be used on other bikes. The bikes operate on a returnable coin system. The program is financed through advertisting on the wheels of the bikes. This model of community bike has spread to many other cities.

One of the first community bicycle projects in the United States was started in Portland, Oregon in 1994 by civic and environmental activists Tom O'Keefe, Joe Keating and Steve Gunther. It took the approach of simply releasing a number of bicycles to the streets for un-restricted use. Portland's Yellow Bike Project was an amazing publicity success, but proved unsustainable initially due to theft and vandalism of the bicycles. The program was later revised to operate under a more restrictive system. Since then many community projects around the country have attempted similar models and met with varying degrees of success.

In Charleston, WV, a joint ministry of St. John's Episcopal Church, Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the Mountain State Wheelers bicycle club is 'Spokes4Folks', which collects used bicycles, refurbishes them, and then distributes them to clients at the Manna Meals Soup Kitchen two or three times per year. They are considering expanding their services to include encouragement of bicycle-based entrepreneurship and bicycle-related youth development services.

Madison, WI had a program where specific bicycles, always painted red, were available for the use of anyone coming across them on the street (especially used on State Street between the UW campus and the capitol). The only rule regarding their use was that they were always to remain outside and unlocked for any passerby to use. This program (called Red Bikes) has since been modified to include deposits for the bicycle and a lock and is only available from spring (when all snow has melted) to November 30. [http://www.ci.madison.wi.us/transp/bicycle.html]

Montreal will begin a city-wide rollout of rental bicycles in 2008, in an effort to encourage locals and tourists to make use of the city's already well-established network of bike paths [cite web|url=http://www.velo.qc.ca/fr/reseaux_cyclables/index-MTL.lasso|title=Le r seau cyclable montr alais|language=French|accessdate=2007-08-02|publisher=V lo Qu bec] . The rental bicycles will be available from depots located throughout the city, where bikes can be rented from automated stations using a credit card. [cite web | url = http://usingbicycles.blogspot.com/2008/07/montreals-new-bicycle-rental-program.html | title = Montreal's New Bicycle Rental Program | work = Using Bicycles | author = Sherwood Stranieri | date = 2008-07-03 | access date = 2008-07-27 ] The Public Bike System - as the official municipal entity will be known - estimates that by 2009, 2,400 bicycles will be deployed at 300 depots throughout the metro area.

* Call a Bike, Munich inaugurated in March 2000
* Cityräder, Helsinki inaugurated in June 2000
* Call a Bike, Berlin inaugurated in March 2003
* Citybike, Vienna inaugurated in June 2003
* Peking, inaugurated in 2005
* Vélo'v, Lyon (France) inaugurated in May 2005
* Bicing, Barcelona (Spain) inaugurated in March 2007
* Sevici, Sevilla (Spain) inaugurated in April 2007
* Vélib', Paris (France) inaugurated in July 2007
* Bizi, Zaragoza (Spain) inaugurated in May 2008
* Salt Lake City Bicycle Collective
* Washington, D.C.'s [http://www.smartbikedc.com/ SmartBikeDC] program, launched August 2008

* Rome's Roma'n'Bike [http://www.roma-n-bike.com/]

ee also

*Bicycle culture
*Free bicycle/Short term hire schemes
*Vélib'
*Vélo'v
*Bicing, Barcelona
*Bizi, Zaragoza
*Stockholm City bikes
* a list of bike sharing projects in german or french wikipedia.
*Carsharing
*Boat sharing
*Sustainable transport
*White Bicycles - Making Music in the 1960s, a book by Joe Boyd

External links

* [http://www.ibike.org/encouragement/freebike.htm List of community bike programs in the USA and worldwide]
* [http://sopobikes.org/community/index.php Map of community bike programs in North America]
* [http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BIKE_SHARE?SITE=OKPON&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT "DC to launch nation's first European-style bike share"] | Associated Press, Sunday, April 27, 2008
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/23/AR2007032301753.html WP-Article about public bicycles in Paris and Lyon]
* [http://bike-sharing.blogspot.com Blog on bike-sharing]
* [http://www.nybikeshare.org/file_download/1 Guide for cities to establish a Bike sharing program, EU financed Report on public bicycles ]
* [http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=prgOTp_HlpU8ZLIKlFDTiXQ&hl=en Table with detailed data about bike sharing shemes, shared document, access requieres account (eg gmail)]

References