A bike sharing program is one of those interesting ideas that rears its eco-green-sustainable head frequently in Portland. Imagine if there were hundreds of bikes locked downtown that office dwellers, students and tourists could check out and ride a few miles for a few dollars. It could be a way to get new people on bikes and reduce car traffic, it could be an expensive clusterfuck. But either way, the city is looking into the scintillating idea. Today the Portland Bureau of Transportation presented its exploratory plans and answered questions during a lunchtime meeting. Here’s the quick basics: 
Didn’t we already try this “socialist bike” thing a while ago? Back in 1995, a grassroots Portland bike-sharing program called the Yellow Bikes Project sprang up with the Community Cycling Center as a sponsor. The Yellow Bikes group aimed to bring 1,000 bright bikes to Portland’s streets, allowing anyone to pick up and ride the bikes around town for free. Rumor has it that there are still yellow bikes to be found at the bottom of the Willamette, mostly under bridges.
What’s different about this idea? The program Portland is exploring wouldn’t be free, to ride the bikes you would pay to subscribe to the bike-sharing program. If the bike disappears on your watch, the program could bill your credit card.
Do other cities have a similar system? Paris has the world’s largest bike-sharing system, with 20,000 shared bikes locked every 300 meters throughout the city. Lyon, Barcelona and Montreal all have between 3,000-6,000 shared bikes on their streets. Stateside, Washington D.C. is the most prominent bike sharing city, but it only has 120 bikes. Seattle is in about the same planning stage for a bike sharing system as we are.
What about tourists who don’t wear helmets and would die on the MAX tracks? That’s a big problem. Some of the cities, like Barcelona, actually discourage tourists from using the shared bikes. While it would be fit nicely into Portland’s “branding,” Portland could make the program just for locals, too. It’s worth noting, though, that in Paris the rate of bike crashes has decreased as bike ridership increases.
So…. What kind of cost are we talking about? Steve Hoyt-McBeth of the Portland Bureau of Transportation estimated a $2.64 million start-up cost for a Portland program of 660 bikes.
More Q&As below the cut.
How are we going to pay for that? Cyclists never pay anything! Even taxes! Advertisements on bike racks and benches pay bike sharing programs throughout Europe, but that probably wouldn’t work in Portland because the city bans ads on transit furniture downtown. Barcelona pays for its system from parking and auto fees, Denver funds its system with public money and grants. Everywhere, paid subscribers cover most of the program costs.
Don’t people steal the bikes? Yep. In Paris, thirty percent of the original bike fleet has disappeared or been destroyed by vandals. Washington D.C. has a better success rate with a more advanced locking system, but it’s still an issue.
Where would Portland’s shared bikes live? Mostly downtown, probably. PBOT thinks the best place to put the bikes are in high density, high employment areas.
When could this happen? Who the hell knows. But there will be bike-sharing demos at the Waterfront on August 14th from 10:30-3pm. We’ll see what happens after that.
It’s never worked before. So it’s gotta work THIS time.
Things done wrong rarely work. So your first batch of homebrew became infected with wild yeast — you can either cry into it or buy better sanitizer.
I just think that with this city’s rank in unemployment and homelessness sharing bicycles is just another misprioritized solution in search of a problem.
yeahhhh!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afE44cHNkEg
Portland you are an asshole.
I just got back from a three month tour of Europe and used shared bikes in most of the major metropolitan areas I visited. In Copenhagen the bikes are free, but you have to put in a 20 DKK coin (about $4) as a deposit. Amsterdam, Stockholm, Oslo, Bruges, Ljubljana, all had huge populations of people riding shared bikes. It’s a brilliant system that I hope Portland considers.
People’s lack of reading comprehension amazes me. Let’s recap:
1) yellow bikes: Free, available to anyone at anytime, including homeless people who stole them and sold them for crack money and/or threw them off the Burnside Bridge.
2) This program: Like Zipcar, requires identification and a credit card, which will be charged something like $500 if a bike you rent disappears.
Are we clear?
No, we aren’t clear, because most of the yellow bikes actually fell apart, turned to shit after actual use.
What prevents people from trashing their rented bikes and still getting their deposit back? We don’t have the tudes that the Euro’s seem to have for their public property.
Why not just subsidize people getting their own bikes, so that they take care of them, instead of this program that tourists will never use? Shit, tourists still take cabs from the airport when they can take MAX at 1/10 the cost.
“What prevents people from trashing their rented bikes and still getting their deposit back? “
Have you ever used Zipcar? If you get in your car and its trashed or wrecked, you report it. A fairly simple investigative process ensues, and the responsible party is held liable. It’s really not that complicated.
I saw the system in Paris last month, worked great there. I don’t think the issue is about whether or not it will work in Portland if we did it right; I think the issue is whether or not we can afford to do it right.
There’s nothing clear about throwing around hypothetical dollar amounts. The program costs $4000 per bike, significantly more than “like $500”. Besides, you fail to mention how these bikes are theft-proof, or throw-off-a-bridge-proof for that matter. Do they have Lo-Jack? Will a cadre of popo surround any prospective thief in the act? I doubt it.
“The program costs $4000 per bike, “
$4,000 includes start-up costs. Replacing a lost bike once the program is up and running isn’t going to cost $4,000. A decent rental bike shouldn’t cost more than $500; if they are actually proposing world-class racing bikes, then I agree this is a bad idea.
“Besides, you fail to mention how these bikes are theft-proof,”
Zipcars aren’t theft proof. Nothing is theft proof. Go back and read my initial comment. My point was simply that protection from incidental or intentional damage from legitimate users is built into this program, unlike the yellow bike program; thus, comparisons between the two are apples-to-oranges.
I read your initial comment thoroughly enough, GLV. The theft issue makes it, most assuredly, apples to apples. The Velibe bikes run at $3450 per bike (built to be ridden 6000 miles/year, and come with a maintenance contract, etc.). Paris lost 15% of it’s fleet in the first year, which corresponds to 99 bikes if it happened in Portland. It would be cheaper to buy 2000 $150 bikes locally and just give them away, a la yellow bike. This is nothing more than PDOT bike wonk resume fodder and nothing else.