55% of CaBi trips would have been non-active without bikesharing

As part of their Bikeshare Transit Development Plan, Arlington put together a presentation and a report on the system's performance, goals and on bikeshare practices nationwide.

One of the more interesting facts within the plan is the breakdown of how CaBi has changed mode-use options. It is doing a lot to shift people towards healthier options, as well as cleaner ones. For example, Without CaBi 55% of users would have taken a non-active mode and 13% would have used a car.

Two numbers that might be overlooked, but are actually very important are that 6% of CaBi users would have just not taken the trip, while only 5% would have used their own bike. That is a glaring statement that what CaBi is about is giving people a choice they didn't feel they already had. There was a large number of people out there who wanted to bike, but felt they couldn't and Capital Bikeshare has made that an option for them. There are another 6% who would have just stayed where they were because they felt like no good transportation choice.

And even when people weren't on a bike, CaBi changed the way they got around. "A quarter of respondents reported that they now use traditional transit more frequently than they did prior to becoming CaBi members, while 5 percent reported that they now use their personal bicycles more often"

I've highlighted some of the other data below, any one of the bullets could have made it's own blog post. 

• 7% of all CaBi members are from Arlington, which isn't too much of a surprise considering how many more stations there are in DC.The ratio of members between the two jurisdictions is pretty close to the ratio of stations.
• A little over half of all Arlington trips are between two Arlington stations. The rest go to DC.
• With 111 bikes, Arlington's system is similarly sized to SmartBike, the old DC-only bike-sharing system, but with nearly 50% more ridership (166 trips per day vs ~100).
• When considering operating and administration costs for the system, the farebox recovery rate was far better than that of ART, Arlington's bus system, and in May of 2011 it was actually better than 100%. In 2011, CaBi operating costs for Arlington County averaged $8.18 per trip. Usage fees accounted for a little over $1M in revenue in 2011 - that's without including December values and with very low values in Jan-Mar.

• Work trips account for about 1/3 of all trips
• Despite criticism that CaBI is too spread out, it actually matches up pretty well with other systems. In the downtown it's stations are as close together as other systems, while in the residential areas it is denser than Minnesota's

• Since the first annual membership began to expire in August 2011, Capital Bikeshare has seen a slight net decrease of new memberships over the previous year. But by the end of 2011, membership started to increase again. I'm guessing there were a few people who - before CaBi launched - thought they would use it, but didn't and so they let their membership expire, but people who bought into the system later than Dec 2010 knew what they were buying - rather than speculating. It's not surprising that speculative buyers were less satisfied.
• Unlike transit, ridership on CaBi doesn't drop significantly on the weekend, and CaBi ridership experiences a small increase during the late evenings, a time when other transit service is greatly reduced or non-existent
• Over six percent of CaBi trips are over 60 minutes long. A small number of very long trips skew average CaBi travel time significantly. If trips over 60 minutes are excluded, the average CaBi trip is only 13 minutes long.
• Over 8 percent of Arlington CaBi trips either begin or end in Georgetown; CaBi may provide a way of connecting between Rosslyn’s Metro station and Georgetown, a neighborhood notably lacking its own Metro station.
• Every month, on average, five bicycles are damaged as a result of a crash and seven are vandalized. 37 more require service for an uncategorized problem. Together the crashed and vandalized bikes only represent 3% of total repairs. On average systemwide, a bicycle will travel 366 miles between repairs.  They might only have a cracked fender or busted rack. The vandalism incidents range from simple tagging on stations to slashed tires to vomit. While a small problem in general, CaBi had to relocate one station from 4th and Adams to 4th and Rhode Island due to repeated incidents of vandalism.
• The number of crashes reported for damaged bikes (60 a year) is much lower than the 17 total that Capital Bikeshare reported after last month's high profile crash or the 20 reported last week by the Post. I asked Chris Holben about that and he said the number they reported to the media was what they've had reported by members and MPD. The other number comes from the repair technicians. So the other ~40 bikes were just found damaged in the dock and the repair team decided they looked like they'd been in a crash. 20 is the confirmed number. 
• There have been 10 bikes stolen. They were either taken by the credit card holder or not properly docked and taken by a thief walking by, shaking the bike and finding it unlocked. They have charged people for lost bikes (ouch), but they don't if the bikes is recovered - regardless of condition.

http://www.bikearlington.com/tasks/sites/bike/assets/File/CaBi_TDP_System_Eval.pdf

Comments

[Chris Slatt]

Looks like Arlington changed the links to the report and presentation. The correct links are now:

http://www.bikearlington.com/tasks/sites/bike/assets/File/BikeshareTDP_Presentation.pdf
http://www.bikearlington.com/tasks/sites/bike/assets/File/BikeshareTDP_System_Eval.pdf

[charlie]

Going back to using CMAQ money, what I don't see from this data is improvements in air quality.

10% of car trips being displaced -- which, if I remember, is about what European cities also found.

Increases in health, mobility, etc, are great but are not part of the CMAQ program.

Is may just tourists use or is that when the bikes starting coming into R-B?

[JeffB]

charlie,

I don't know anything about CMAQ but this brochure about the program suggests to me a slightly different interpretation of the program (emphasis is mine).

Transportation conformity is...

A process required by the Clean Air Act (CAA) Section 176(c) which establishes the framework for improving air quality to protect public health and the environment.

The goal of transportation conformity is to ensure that Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and Federal Transit Administration (FTA) funding and approvals are given to highway and transit activities that are consistent with air quality goals.

The CAA requires that metropolitan transportation plans, metropolitan transportation improvement programs (TIPs) and Federal projects conform to
the purpose of the State Implementation Plan (SIP).

Conformity to a SIP means that such activities will
not cause or contribute to any new violations of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS); increase the frequency or severity of NAAQS violations; or delay timely attainment of the NAAQS or any required interim milestone.

So it seems to me that CMAQ funding is to be used for developing transportation alternatives that don't further contribute to poor air quality. They don't have to necessarily improve the existing quality (though that would be nice :) ).

[charlie]

@jeffb; I think you are mistaking the process for the goals.

In terms of CMAQ, the best arguments are:

1) transit extender

2) given how short trips are, a car subsitute would be disproporatilly polluting; you cat converter didn't have time to heat up. Unfortantly, stuff like that gets lost in the funding spreadsheets.

3) timing; partly as a transit extender but it makes using transit easier outside of peak service hours.

Perhaps making yoru bike-share key your SmartTrip key (for the future) would be a good plan. Or Alpert's intelligent billboard -- but run them at bikeshare stations instead of at bus stops.

[JeffB]

Well the second paragraph above covers the goal. Funding for highway and transit that is consistent with air quality goals. CaBi is transit is it not?

[Jacques]

@charlie --
If 13% of the roughly 1.5 million rides taken so far replaced a car trip, that does equal about 200K fewer rides taken in 18 months, or 10K fewer per month.

Broken out, that's:
--135,000 fewer personal vehicle trips
--60,000 fewer cab trips

I'm not sure what the typical return on CMAQ dollars is, but it seems there's at least some impact for that investment.

[Bossi]

I'd be curious if there is any statistically-significant increase in transit ridership on various routes/lines and whether it correlates with the # of CaBi trips wihch originated or ended nearby.

[norb]

These are great numbers. The only comment I would make is that taking transit is actually a fairly active mode, given that on average people will walk about 20 minutes per day to and from the stations or stops they use. So switching from transit to cabi has value, just probably not as much as switching from car to cabi.