Say Goodbye to DC's Third Public Bicycle Program?

It was just three years ago that NPS introduced DC's 3rd bike sharing program. This one, like Wheels4Wellness, was really a bike fleet rather than a "public" system. But, it used a modern B-Cycle system, instead of the poorly designed one that Wheels4Wellness tried to work out.

Nonetheless, like SmartBike and Wheels4Wellness, it appears that the NPS B-cycle system may be not long for this world. Based on this photo of the B-Cycle station at the NPS offices at 900 Ohio Drive SW it doesn't appear to be well kept.  All the bikes look like they need some attention and are locked to the station with cable locks.  The terminal doesn't appear to be functioning.

NPS should just spring for three additional CaBi stations at National Capitol Region HQ, National Mall & Memorial Parks HQ and the National Capitol Parks East HQ and be done with it.

See it in better times here.

Comments

[Will]

I remember launch day back in 2008, such high hopes... Before this thing gets mothballed, any academics or ambitious grad students in economics or policy would be wise to go down and collect some evidence on this program. We have the perfect natural experiment (actually several of them running concurrently) on bikesharing. We've had two successful systems (SmartBike, CaBi)and two failures (Wheels4Wellness, Bcycle). With bikeshare poised to become a major piece of urban transportation nationwide, cross-comparisons of systems that succeeded or failed will be relevant for years.

[washcycle]

to be fair, the two failures were bike fleets (open to only a small group of people). And I think economies of scale problems make those unworkable.

[Michael H.]

You can look at all of the smaller programs as experiments that helped lead to the success of Capital Bikeshare. More and more cities are studying and emulating CaBi. It's probably not that important that other cities examine Wheels4Wellness and NPS Bcycle that closely.