After a two-hour hearing, city council voted 4-1 this morning to support a funding package that will pour $6.6 million of federal funds into East Portland and Foster bike/ped improvements and a downtown bike sharing program. I’ll post about the East Portland and Foster issues later, but the big topic of discussion is the plan to bring bike sharing to the central city.
The plan calls for installing 74 bike sharing stations across inner Portland for a Zipcar-like bike system that has a total startup cost of $4-4.5 million. Numerous other cities have similar systems, but here’s a video from Minneapolis that paints a pretty good picture of what ours would look like.
With a city council that’s all decidedly pro-bike the debate on the plan hinged on two issues: 1) Should the city invest in bike sharing when there’s unmet basic safety needs throughout the city (relevant map of unimproved roads here)? and 2) What’s going to be the public-private split on the cost of the program?
Commissioner Nick Fish countered the first issue with a last-minute amendment to the plan that promised the city would prioritize $1.25 million for passed-over projects—namely, improvements to SW Barbur and design of the Sullivan’s Gulch trail—at some future date. It’s a “have your cake and eat it too” idea, because the amendment didn’t come with any real dollars attached, just a sworn commitment to fund those projects on some sunnier day. So nice words, but no money.
The amendment passed unanimously, but that didn’t sway the vote of lone equity wolf Amanda Fritz, who, as expected, voted no on the whole plan.
“I unfortunately cannot vote for this,” said Fritz, saying the city should prioritize funding infrastructure like sidewalks citywide before it caters to downtown students, tourists, and officeworkers who already have numerous transportation options. Fritz said she couldn’t support the plan when, “I can’t get off the bus a stop earlier than I usually would because there’s no sidewalk. “
But, “As a reality check,” she noted, “One mile of sidewalks on Capitol Highway costs $19 million to build.”
Okay, now what about the cost? Minneapolis’s bike share got started and remains running thanks to sponsorship from a Minnesota Blue Cross group. Portland’s system would use something like that model, partnering the $2 million in federal startup funds with $2 million from local and private funds, including to-be-determined amount of cash from Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oregon.
The system will cost an estimated $1.5 million to run every year and it’s not determined yet at all who the ongoing private sponsorships of the program would work.
Commissioners Dan Saltzman and Randy Leonard were won over by that promise of private partnership—and the estimate that it will create 40-50 jobs.
Commissioner Saltzman voted to bike sharing but only with the caveat that all there be no public funding for operations of the program. “If the operations costs are not being shared through fees or private sponsorship, it tells me something is wrong with the model,” said Saltzman.
One quick final note: PBOT said in the presentation that there has been no theft or vandalism problems with bike sharing systems in other cities. That’s half true. Theft and vandalism hasn’t been a problem at all in US bike sharing programs, 80 percent of the bikes in Paris’s program were stolen or vandalized. Those rapscallions!
Here’s what happens next: Metro votes on whether the three projects the city recommends actually should get the federal funding that’s up for grabs (more info on that pot of money here). If bike sharing does get funded in the end, the stations should be operation in Portland by fall of 2013.
How can you say there hasn’t been a problem with theft and vandalism of these bikes in the US? Portland’s YellowBike project was a posterchild – ALL of the bikes were stolen! Same thing happened when they tried it in Tucson, and in Madison…the list goes on and on…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_shari…
I am part of this bike sharing system in Mexico City, and it’s awesome. You see people on it constantly, the bikes are well maintained, and it cuts down on inner city driving tremendously.
@reymont yellow bikes are completely different from a bike sharing program. Yellow bikes would be the equivalent of zipcar just leaving the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition and anyone can use it at any time for free with no accountability. Please keep your red herrings at home.
The sun shines more than a month a year in Mexico City.
If this was actually sustainable than why has no one else done it on their dime?
Great idea – but stop spending our money to punish the disabled.
This whole idea is ridiculous. They’re throwing money down a hole.
The Internet: Where you don’t need to know anything about a topic except that you hate it!
FREEDOM.
What I wish more than anything is that Portland could just shut the f**k up about transportation projects for awhile.
You’d think that transportation was the only thing we have to worry about around here. Schools? What’s that? Crime? Nah! No good jobs? Who gives a shit?
As long as we keep adding bioswales to our bike boulevards, City Hall can knock off early. Job well done!
@reymont – As econoline noted, it’s pointless to compare this bike sharing program to the yellow bike program. Instead of unlocked bikes left to depend on the goodwill of citizens to return them, these systems require a payment to check out a bike, hold users accountable for damage, and securely lock the bikes.
I’ve used the systems in Mexico City and Montreal and was pretty convinced that it would be very difficult to steal or vandalize one of their bikes without having to pay up for it.
“How can you say there hasn’t been a problem with theft and vandalism of these bikes in the US? Portland’s YellowBike project was a posterchild – ALL of the bikes were stolen! Same thing happened when they tried it in Tucson, and in Madison…the list goes on and on…”
“@reymont yellow bikes are completely different from a bike sharing program. Yellow bikes would be the equivalent of zipcar just leaving the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition and anyone can use it at any time for free with no accountability. Please keep your red herrings at home.”
“This whole idea is ridiculous. They’re throwing money down a hole.”
Dipshit.
If this is such a great idea, why hasn’t the public sector jumped all over it?
You know who isn’t so happy with this is gonna be the folks trying to rent out bikes downtown now – along with the taxpayers.
Yet again.
For that amount of money, they could have purchased outright and donated 11,000 $400 bikes to low-income households.
Not that I necessarily would have supported that either over public safety improvements and other core infrastructure improvements, but it would do a lot more towards promoting cycling over driving.
this isn’t about people getting bikes to keep. it’s about having bikes available widely as a short-distance alternative. ride the bus downtown, use a bike at lunch or briefly after work, bus home. no need for the car. have the system there for tourists. an option for someone who needs to make a quick, short trip during work & getting the car out of parking would be a pain (and expense).
there’s a reason these things are being installed in more cities & why cities are expanding their systems: they work. they make sense, lots of people use them, and they improve transportation for everyone.
$12 million to build 1 mile of sidewalk? I’d like to see the breakdown of that.
The 80% Paris theft figure was surprising. PBOT lying through their teeth, not so much.
Let’s also have some Segway racks in front of the high-end hotels.
@Splainitself and @Tabarnhart –
I object to the $6,000 price tag on each of these bikes. That’s a pretty disgusting misuse of public funds.
I don’t think many people will want to provide a credit card and pay to ride a bike downtown when they can just jump on the bus for free.
I don’t think the operating income will be anywhere near what it will take to run this business, so the city will have to keep shoveling money at this thing every year.
I don’t think people who DO want to provide a credit card and pay to ride a bike downtown should receive a public subsidy for that, when they can just jump on a bus for free. So what if they’d have more fun riding a bike? Why should I have to pay taxes to help support their hobby? Get on the free bus that we already offer, or pay for the whole cost of the bike ride yourself.
I think that if this WAS a good idea, it would be taken up by private enterprise. It’s not, it’s a dead-end money hole with no possibility of a positive ROI, and so no private investor will touch it.
This is a terrible thing. It’s politicians spending huge amounts of public money on a ‘feel good’ project that’s doomed to fail financially, with no investigation into the enormous costs that they are quoting.
I offered my opinion earlier, and because I didn’t bother to type a whole page breakdown on it, you both chose to assume that it was a kneejerk reaction that I hadn’t thought much about. I think that assumption reveals a lot about the both of you.
It it was such a good idea they should have promised to resign if it fails.