This weekend, an Austin on Two Wheels reader set me news that the City of San Antonio is moving forward with a public bike share program to open up later this year. For those unfamiliar with bike share, it is a program that lets you check out bikes from self serve stalls at various locations for a small fee. San Antonio is taking about $1 million in federal stimulus package money to get the first in Texas program off the ground (note: the City of Austin has a City staff only bike share program that is a few years old.)
So should we be feeling bad that a city far behind Austin in green-ness has apparently leap frogged us in this endeavour? Not so fast. Just because other cities are doing things, doesn’t mean we should be too, and I think planners tend to focus too much on being first or getting national awards then planning it right. It would be helpful to look at the cost benefit of funding such a program and potential long term success before jumping on the bandwagon.
“Bike sharing is great, right? Why are you, a local voice for alternative transportation, down on bike share?” you ask. Well, unlike most of the people cheerleading for bike share, I’ve actually founded and run a vehicle sharing program, Austin CarShare. I have seen the challenges of doing so, and frankly, I don’t think we are at a point where bike share is a self-sustaining, growth program. I believe in bike share’s potential, but I don’t believe we are there yet to fund a program to the public.
Bike share can work elsewhere. Copenhagen has a successful bike share program that is over a decade old. Paris’ Velib program was first heralded as a universal success then boo-hooed as a money pit (though I believe that had more to do with underbidding from the operations company and French laws limiting the money they could recover from user damage.) B-Cycle, an industry funded bike share in Denver, has gotten some initially very good numbers, but it has just launched and it is too early to tell long term success.
There is limited money on the table for bike facilities, so before our community plunks down funds that could build real, on-the-road bike infrastructure in favor of the equipment and staffing for such a project we should think about these three real challenges in making this a success.
1. Americans don’t like to share. There. I said the thing no one wants to admit. This is not insurmountable, but it is a cultural bias enhanced by all the marketing encouraging you to buy lots of stuff. This can and will change, but not without some negative reinforcement. You have to make owning or the similar alternative very expensive in comparison to sharing/renting to get behavior change. Based on the strong aversion our country has to voluntarily shoulder any additional cost for even the most limited attempts to rein in greenhouse gases, our leaders lack the political courage to make these changes, and we will have to waiting until change is very painfully forced upon us.
2. You are leaping 2 tall buildings stacked on one another all at once. My experience with Austin CarShare was that getting people to think about sharing was a leap. To ask people to share and change their mode of transportation, especially when that mode is a car, is twice if not more the leap. Most people are resistant to change. Too much change without the necessary support for facilitate that change (more on that in a moment), and you will get push back. People have to envision themselves doing something to feel comfortable trying it. You are asking a society used to privately owned cars to drop the “privately owned” and “car” from the equation. This is a steep curve to climb.
3. We don’t have the infrastructure yet that will encourage mass use. The most long term successful program I’ve seen is Copenhagen’s bike share program. Funny, bike share succeeds in a city that already had 1/3rd of the population biking to work. This gets to the root of bike share: it will succeed only in cities where biking as a valid form of everyday transportation will succeed. Just putting bikes out on the street is not enough. People have to see them as a safe, viable form of transport. Until we have a network of bike paths, separated bike lanes, and bike boulevards that make the novice comfortable jumping on a bike, we will not get there. These kind of facilities breeds confidence in the users and more people will use the facilities. Seeing others in large numbers riding bikes on the streets is the sort of cue early majority market users need to see to even consider riding. Don’t believe me? Read this Copenhagenize article about how sushi became mainstream. 10 years ago would you expect sushi to be ubiquitous in supermarkets from Buda to Lubbock? Yet today, sushi is mainstream. And so can cycling. BUT bike share is not the bridge. Facilities are the bridge.
I’d love to have bike share in Austin, but I cannot justify the money going to that program while we are still so far from facilities that serve cyclists of all skill levels. Let’s be the smart ones and instead of jumping on the bike share bandwagon as the silver bullet like everyone else, let’s make a world class cycling city and add bike share as an additional service.
on Jun 21st, 2010 at 8:49 pm
RT @austinon2wheels: San Antonio getting public bike share, should ATX be envious? http://bit.ly/c2LsO9 I say no. #yellowbike.org
on Jun 22nd, 2010 at 8:37 am
Then again, how much money was spent on the commuter train? Cap Metro should be working with the city on public private partnerships to get something small going to get commuters from the station to their ultimate destination. If you had even five small share stations around downtown, you might be able to bolster ridership a bit…and the bikes could advertise cigarettes!
on Jun 22nd, 2010 at 9:01 am
Yeah, but if the roads you ride on aren’t bikeable to all skill levels when you get to your rail stop, people will not use it. I think bike share before you have good infrastructure is cart in front of horse. It makes cities feel good because it’s a program they can point at as progress without addressing making room for bicycles and pedestrians (which inevitably comes at the cost of room for cars.) Bike share should augment an already great system, not a silver bullet to replace one.
on Jun 22nd, 2010 at 9:04 am
Rob,
I’m also reminded of the millions of dollars CapMetro gave for roads after the 2000 light rail election failed. Think if they had spent that money on infrastructure like bike facilities that actually enhanced ridership? CapMetro is pretty broke right now, but if they have money to spent, it should be on bike infrastructure, like that rails with trails network we were promised, not bike share.
on Jun 24th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
San Antonio is not Austin at all. The size is different, and the bikeability is very different. I’ve ridden my bike a lot in San Antonio, and they are putting in a lot of effort to make it better to ride around central San Antonio, ex. FREE bike maps, large movements for greenbelt conectivity, lots of bike lanes, plus a bike trail that connects the Missions. Plus San Antonio is not as dense as Austin, people don’t live cramed into downtown, it’s mostly for the tourists, so traffic is really light, and fun and easy to ride in. I’m assuming that this is not mainly for the people of SA, but for the tourists, which has it’s +/-, but because tourists will use it because SA is easier to ride in I think it might actually work on the small scale. So it may not be right for Austin right now, but I think SA could make it work for their city and their circumstances.
on Jun 25th, 2010 at 12:40 am
Annie D.,
If bike share is for tourists, than that’s another story. That is not the way bike share has been sold in Austin or other cities I’ve read about. Instead, it is being positioned as a facilitator to getting more people on bikes where we don’t currently have many. My point is that bike share cannot do that, and if getting majority culture adoption of cycling as legitimate transport is the goal, facilities for all skill levels, not bike share, will get us there.
I would say that if San Antonio wants to get beyond tourists using bike share, halting the sprawl and redeveloping your urban core is the direction to go, not more spread out. You have a really great urban core if resources were put there. I’m not holding my breath, but downtown San Antonio and the surrounding neighborhood could be really great, walkable, livable neighborhoods, not just a tourist land, if the city tried.
on Feb 7th, 2011 at 9:07 pm
It seems targeted to tourists and SA people who want to tour their own city, judging by the comments from city leaders and the location in central SA. The desirable part to live in is northern SA, far away from downtown and the bikes.
A bike share would be unnecessary here in ATX, unless it was a very small one targeted towards tourists downtown. A bike can be had for pretty cheap, and one of the unintended affects noticed elsewhere is that people tend to go buy their own bikes after a bikeshare is implemented. Not a bad thing, just something to keep in mind before you go buy 500 bikes.
on Feb 7th, 2011 at 9:08 pm
effects* sorry that really bothers me.
on Nov 6th, 2011 at 7:50 pm
If you come to San Antonio, definitely try the bikeshare. I used it today, and loved it. I work in downtown San Antonio and will use bikeshare for short errands during the day. Others are using bikeshare as a “park and ride.” Why buy a bike when I have one sitting outside my door at work? What’s not to love? And, congratulations to B-Cycle for a fanstatic program. It works!!! Yeah!!!!
Oh, and by the way, the desirable place to live in San Antonio is urban Pearl Brewery or South Town. Perfect for bikers. (It feels like people from Austin don’t know what’s happening 100 miles to the south.)