Capital Bikeshare Newsnami: Day 7

Photo by artboredom

There were some really good articles, photos and posts on CaBi yesterday. Currently, we're third largest in the U.S. right now, and we should be largest by Halloween. But who's counting?

• The New York Times covered it on their green blog with a lot of good info I didn't know (and couldn't find on Sunday). "The system officially opens to the public on Monday with 400 bikes at 49 stations....In June, Minneapolis launched its Nice Ride program, with over 60 solar-powered stations and 700 bikes. A similar effort got under way in April in Denver, with 425 bikes. A major program is set to make its debut in Miami this fall, and New York is studying a massive program, with 30,000 bikes." And "[Capital Bikeshare and Smartbike] will coexist for a month before SmartBike begins to be phased out."
• This didn't take long.
• WTOP asked the Mayor what happens when he's gone. "We're gonna keep being a national leader in biking and intermodal transportation," says Fenty. "Mayors just hire peope. These are the guys who did all the hard work, and we've got lots of them at DDOT." And Jay Fisette added "Alexandria, Falls Church, Montgomery and Prince Georges [Counties] are next!
• Which is what TBD would like to believe.
• The Post is all about the Benjamins. "The District's $6 million share of the cost came in a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Arlington's $835,000 share came from several public sources in Virginia, officials said."
• Grist adds some nice facts and quotes "Lyon wasn't considered a particularly bike-friendly city. Since the introduction, though, officials there say shared bikes have increased bike use by 500 percent...Gabe Klein, D.C.'s Director of Transportation, wants to increase the number of bikes to 2,200 within a year."
• Andy Clarke of LAB was among those in yesterday's ride - he notes that in Montreal Bixi recorded 3 million trips this year.
• So did Mark Blacknell of the Arlington BAC - and he took a bunch of great photos
• The Bike Sharing blog has a post natch. There are now about 200 bike sharing systems in the world, up from 17 just three years ago.
• Other coverage: Dr. Grildlock, DCist, NBC, Patch, and Arlington Now.

 

And Fox covered it

Comments

[MB]

I hope no one let Ashley Halsey onto a bikeshare bike when he was writing that story. We want to keep the system crash-free . . .

[Keroicap]

Couple of thoughts/questions:

1) Have they solved the problem of having all the bikes collect at the downhill stations? Seems like a lot of people from, say, Woodley Park could bike downtown and then take the Metro home to avoid biking uphill on a clunky 3-speed.

You could theoretically solve this with a pricing scheme that rewards people for biking uphill, but that doesn't exist now and I'm curious how they will deal with it.

2) The pricing scheme seems to promote trip-hopping. For example, if I wanted to go from Adams Morgan to Crystal City, the trip would probably take more than half an hour. But I could take one bike downtown or to Foggy Bottom, drop it off, take another bike, and avoid the fee. Not sure if that's a flaw, but it seems a little odd.

[Christopher Fotos]

Congrats to everyone who worked so hard to make this happen.

[washcycle]

Kericap, they have trucks that will redistribute the bikes. Trip-hopping is strongly encouraged.

MB, very funny.