Arlington Bike Sharing

Paul DeMaio of BikeArlington just returned from a tour of bike sharing cities and shares some interesting observations.

Barcelona launched Bicing in March of this year and already has 30,000 members and a doubling of bike trips in the city since then.  Yes, since March. This system has 1,500 bikes with the goal of 3,000 by the end of the year.

Arlington is working toward implementing a bike-sharing program. Already with a 5% bike mode share, what impact will bike-sharing have on this jurisdiction? Is it possible to see a doubling or even tripling of the number of bike trips due to the introduction of public-use bikes here?

DC's program will be much more modest. In fact, at 120 bikes, it will be - by far - the smallest of the modern bike sharing programs out there. I'm worried it's below the critical mass needed to work, but remain hopeful nonetheless. If Arlington makes a similar effort, and if the two are compatible - so that a bike rented in DC can be left in Arlington and vice-versa - that will help.

Looking on flickr for the photo for this post, there are a lot of photos of the stations under construction. My French was never very good (I can order beer and food - as long as it's goat) but seems the Parisians are excited. [The caption to this one either reads "The velib terminals leave the ground" or "I'm terrified of the next Bourne Identity movie" it's hard to tell].

Comments

[Marc B.]

Currently, Bicing in Barcelona has +60,000 users, with 1,000 new users/day.

With only 82 stations and 1.200 bikes, the system is completly collapsed. We need, at least, 10,000 bikes (as in Paris) to maintain the original goal: 7 users by bike (not the current 50 users/bike).