Public Bicycle Growing Pains

Issues with funding and infrastructure are starting to pop up in various bike sharing systems and it's even being seen in DC and Arlington, where both are working to find a way that a regional system can be built and expanded.

Most of the damage [to Velib] is shouldered by JCDecaux, the advertising company responsible for keeping the system up and running in exchange for a 10-year license to exploit 1,600 citywide outdoor displays. Meanwhile, the City of Paris keeps the revenue from Vélib user fees.

This initial agreement has resulted in ongoing disputes over who should assume financial responsibility for the vandalism and theft of abused bicycles.

DeMaio calls this conflict of interests, characteristic of the advertising model of bike-share funding, a "moral hazard."

"The advertising company does not benefit from revenues generated by the system as the jurisdiction does, so the advertising company does not have the same incentive to keep the bikes maintained as the jurisdiction would if it were operating the system," he reasons.

"In fact, the better the advertising company has the bikes maintained, the more expensive it would be, and the less profit they would keep from the advertising contract."

Clear Channel Outdoor is also the first outdoor-advertising sponsor to break into the U.S. bike-sharing market with its SmartBike DC program, which has been operating up to 120 bicycles in Washington D.C. since 2008.

After the city spent the past seven years installing 48 kilometers of bike lanes, the company chose to charge users an annual fee of $40 for unlimited use of bikes, up to three hours per journey.

"The advertising-company model can be improved," says DeMaio, "but I think long-term sustainability would lend itself to the government, quasi-governmental transport provider, university, non-profit, and for-profit models."

Comments

[MB]

Anyone here care to give their (now presumably) long-term impressions of maintenance/service of the SmartBike system? I've never had any issues with the bikes themselves. The kiosks, on the other hand, have been less than fantastic. Finding them randomly out of service when you're planning to use a bike as part of your homeward bound transport late at night? Frustrating. Which then brings us to the "customer service", which I've found to be non-existent.

[none]

Interesting that DeMaio would talk about conflict of interest, yet is never upfront with who is paying him for his services. He was pro Bicing/Smart Bike while on their payroll, then was all hot and bothered about Dial-a-Bike and now Bixi I believe. Until he is upfront about this, his expertise is rather suspect in my book.

Streetsblog already debunked JCDecaux's claims of rampant vandalism as a ploy for more money. The DC Smart Bike fees go back to DDOT, so this articles insinuation that its simply money in Clear Channel's pocket is wrong. While I applaud the city's initiative to be the first in the country with this type of system, DDOT were the ones that shot themselves in the foot by not demanding a larger system to begin with.

[Washcycle]

I think its important to remember where we were when this all started. in 2003, when this was added into the ClearChannel deal, no one was talking about bike sharing. This was four years before Velib. Two years before Velo'v - the first really successful bike sharing system. It was then DDOT head Dan Tangherlini who got SmartBike included in the Clear Channel deal. I don't think anyone else in the Williams administration was interested. Had he pushed for more stations he would have gotten nothing. Tangherlini showed a good bit of vision on this and were it not for him asking for a starter system we would be where everyone else is, trying to get one started and envying Tulsa's.

DDOT has not shot themselves in the foot. They have a good bit of leverage with ClearChannel. CC doesn't want a reputation of being hard to work with and they might relish the chance to get out of SmartBike for a lump sum. Right now DC needs to decide what they want bike sharing to look like in the future and then they can revamp their deal with CC to match that.