Washington D.C. gets SmartBike bike-sharing program
Washington D.C. is set to become the first American city with a high-tech bike-sharing program. According to the Washington Post, for a $40 annual fee, you'll be able to pluck a cherry red three-speed from any of 10 (downtown only) bike stations. You can then ride the bike for three hours. Want to ride it for longer? You'll need to drag it back to an access point and top it up.
It's a step in the right direction, but being a Berliner, it seems a bit rubbery an execution. In Berlin, there are thousands of City Bikes available, sprinkled liberally on almost every street corner. There's no actual "stations": you simply walk up to a bike and call a number on the bike's bumper, which unlocks it for your use. You can then use it for any amount of time, being charged a low hourly rate on your mobile.
What makes the Berlin city bikes so fantastic is that you can leave them anywhere. They have built-in GPS units: once a week or so, fleets of vans swoop over the city, pick up discarded bikes, and redistribute them optimally. I once had about twenty city bikes I had discarded in front of my apartment building: one day, I came home, and they'd all been picked up.
Simple and perfect. And while Washington's Smartbike program worries about theft, Berlin's GPS units effectively prevent the bikes from being stolen, short of using a blowtorch to cut into the unit's enclosed steal casing. Washington's solution seems a lot more limiting: as far as the Washington Post says, Smartbike can't physically track the bikes, so they simply ding anyone who has their bike stolen or damaged on their watch for $550.
It's great to see American cities experiment with commuter bicycling, but it certainly seems like a sub-optimal solution when European cities have used more sophisticated and successful systems for years.
D.C. Bike Sharing Kicks Into High Gear [Washington Post]
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Are these the DeutscheBahn bikes you are referring to in Berlin?
Strictly speaking, Washington DC is not the first US city to do this. Charlottesville, VA attempted something similar, but with a but more optimistic of a mindset. There were a number of bicycles that were set and free for use, but without any sort of unlocking or GPS. Sadly, all the bicycles were stolen.
Even then, Portland, Oregon and others did it first.
While I applaud the effort, it really takes some street-smarts to bike around DC. There are some really nice, picturesque, usable paths and routes, but they don't reach into most parts of the city. So, you're face with mixing it up on the streets -- and in DC, traffic is 'dense'.
I have my own tales to tell, but I'll just let the internets do the talking.
http://travel.families.com/blog/sharing-the-road-with-the-nations-worst-drivers
Too bad, really, because the area also ranks near the top in congestion.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/18/AR2007091800777.html
Come to think of it, maybe we should simply require everyone there to use the bikes instead of cars.
Thefoodgeek, yeah, I specified that it is the first "high-tech bike-sharing service" but it's subtle. I know there are others, and the bikes were destroyed.
Marley, yeah. It's a great service. I simplified some of the details for the post, but you can read more on it here.
http://www.callabike.de/kundenbuchung/process.php?proc=english&f=500&key=19cfed66265222e9327007e6238e2bb2...00000
@3: I wouldn't want to bike in any American city: American motorists just don't know how to accommodate bikes in city limits. Frankly, I'm a fan of making all city centers car free (except for taxis, emergency vehicles, city vehicles, commercial vehicles and cars driven by the handicapped), but it implies an incredible and reliable public transportation system. I believe they have such a scheme in Bern, Switzerland, though.
D'oh, you did, indeed. The nostalgia for the Yellow Bike Program must have dulled my reading comprehension skills. Probably best for me not to take any standardized tests for the next couple of hours.
Here's a link about above mentioned yellow bikes, Olympia, WA's pink bikes and more.
http://www.ibike.org/encouragement/freebike/details.htm
Funny thing, here in DC they rolled out a safety plan to the most congested intersections and they are actually working. I've safely crossed 100s of intersections and haven't been hit by a bus yet.
I have a bike rack across the street from me and am considering using it instead of taxis to places in the city Metrorail doesn't serve. (I use metro for my commute.) (Yes I know we have buses / see above.)
They don't offer helmets and if you are off to a place where you need to lock it up you'll need a bike lock, but then again then again.
This program is long on good intentions and short on attention to detail, which is kind of a theme with the Fenty administration.
For instance, there are exactly as many bikes as there are slots in the racks. You can only return a bike to a rack if there is an empty slot. So unless someone has checked out a bike at your destination rack and is using it at the same time as you, you won't be able to check the bike in. And if someone else checked in a bike at the rack you started from while you were out, you aren't taking it back to that rack either. Hello, late fees!
Those bikes are the exact same ones used here in Barcelona, in the "Bicing" scheme.
It is a huge success here. So much so that they banned foreigners from using it (you may detect the voice of experience here).
But they get jacked. I have seen a few with the fenders removed and repainted. BTW, the first place to use these bikes was Oslo. Some Norwegian guy designed them. I'd look it up but I just got back from the pub.
"short of using a blowtorch to cut into the unit's enclosed steal casing."
Surely having a steal casing on a bike is just inviting theft?
Who would take care of maintenance (oiling chains, fixing brakes and cables, patching tires) in such a system?
Its awesome, a low rent trial of this took place in Porrirua, one of Wellington's satellite cities in New Zealand. It took, in all due seriousness, about a day and a half for every single bike to disappear to never be seen of again. Gallingly, many of the bikes came from police auctions of recovered stolen bikes. What a woyld.