Thursday Afternoon Commute - Rant

Good afternoon. Don't forget the Tour de Fat is this Saturday. 

• New CaBi stations installed this morning at 18th St & Rhode Island Ave NE, 15th & F St NE and 12th & Irving St NE
• On a recent edition of The Tommy Show on 94.7 FM, many callers complained about cyclists. Mostly listeners were just ranting, but Tommy later admitted that "they could have done it in a more educational manner."
• Tour de Fat pre-party at ChurchKey. How I wish I could go.
• Support bike lanes on New Mexico Ave NW
• When you bike the Custis Trail, you pass right by the grave of a Revolutionary War Veteran. A recent Eagle Scout project added a handrail to allow access between the cemetery and the trail.
• So much about bike sharing
  • Other trailblazing cities (that's us) seem to be looking on to NYC's rollout with a bit of exasperation. For a local element 'Meanwhile, Chris Holben, project manager for Capital Bikeshare in Washington, defended his city’s claim to being the country’s bike share pacesetter. “It is the most successful, to date,” he said. “We’ll see what happens in a couple more weeks.”'
  • Meanwhile, Chicago is starting the process by discovering that there are overage fees and that the bikes cost $1200. You don't say? Can we just send them all of our pre-CaBi news articles to cut, paste and reprint? And I love this quote: "Nobody is going to pay $75 — plus daily overtime fees — to ride a bike a few times. And if you ride a lot, you will ride your own bike," he said. 
  • And Chicago has some NIMBY issues.
  • Businessweek predicts that CitiBike won't make money. They may be right, because expanding the system beyond the ideal profit point is probably in the city's best interest. But they may also be wrong, and I suspect the system could turn a profit if that were the goal (not counting what it would cost to rent all the land needed for the stations). 
  • Profit or not, people like it. And it's good for business.
  • Earl Blumenauer thinks New Yorkers will love it. "Closer to home, I’ve watched Capital Bikeshare, Washington’s bike share program, begin to redefine the city. From its onset in 2011 with 49 stations and 400 bikes, the system has exploded in less than three years of operation — celebrating its four-millionth rider this spring. Now the system has 224 stations and 1,900 bikes throughout the region, becoming the only mass transit system in America that fully pays its operating cost.I witness it on a daily basis being used by tourists, people on errands, and even those commuting to work. The New York system, with three times the bikes and 75 more stations, is poised to enjoy even greater and more rapid success.
  • The 10 largest bike share programs outside of China (not DC).
• San Francisco has a bike speed indicator on the Golden Gate Bridge. It will only encourage people to ride faster ("I got that thing up to 40!")

 

Photo by M.V. Jantzen

Comments

[JJJJJ]

Cabi needs less expansion out, and more infill in. Georgetown and logan circle anyone? And look at the congress area, its a desert.

[darren]

re Citibike expanding unprofitably: i doubt there's anything preventing the City, state, transit agency, private developers, housing authority, or any other entity from subsidizing Alta to bring service somewhere where they wouldn't otherwise go because they didn't think they could profitably.

[though they might then make a subset of their employees subject to those nettlesome Service Contract Act wages]

[washcycle]

CaBi would love to put stations near the Capitol, but security concerns means they can't bring their vans in to service those stations. It would all have to be done by bike. And there are concerns about where on AOC land they can even do it. If you want CaBi near Congress, write your Congress member.

[JJJJJ]

Does every station need rebalancing? Congress isnt at the top or bottom of a hill where it would be a constant issues. 25 dock station and done.

[washcycle]

I don't think it's just about rebalancing.

[JJJJJ]

Its not just congress though, its the entire area.