As Austin considers a public bike share program, we have looked at success stories like Washington DC, London, and Sevilla. The focus of the coverage to date has been on how popular the programs are, how they are changing the nature of city streetscapes and how people view the bicycle. There has been precious little data on how the systems affect the larger society… until now.

A recent report released in the peer view British Medical Journal showed some pretty impressive health benefits and the low safety risk of the bike share program in Barcelona.

Compared with car users the estimated annual change in mortality of the Barcelona residents using Bicing (n=181,982) was 0.03 deaths from road traffic incidents and 0.13 deaths from air pollution. As a result of physical activity, 12.46 deaths were avoided (benefit:risk ratio 77). The annual number of deaths avoided was 12.28. As a result of journeys by Bicing, annual carbon dioxide emissions were reduced by an estimated 9,062,344 kg.

This is good news for us, especially since the researchers used Barcelona, a city that when it comes to cycling looked much more like Austin than Copenhagen when the Bicing program was introduced. The report shows that the danger of riding versus driving is statistically insignificant while the longer term effect of active transportation makes cycling a huge net positive in living a healthy, longer life. This is no doubt true of cycling in general but the accessibility, convenience and low cost to entry of bicycle sharing means far more residents can benefit from these health dividends.

I’d love to see some economic impacts of bicycle sharing as well. While the U.S. health care industry makes profits when people are sick, other industries and our society at-large see the real costs of an increasingly over-weight, unhealthy population. For example, the City of Copenhagen regularly looks at the positive economic effects getting regular citizens on bikes has to their bottom line health care costs. Their reports estimate the City profits $1.77 in greater productivity and health costs saved for every miles their residents traveled by bike. Meanwhile in Demark as a whole, the nation looses 26 cents for each mile driven (which includes both health/productivity costs as well as the higher cost of automotive road maintenance versus bicycle infrastructure.)

There is also a huge potential local dividend from those who shift away from car ownership. For most Americans, transportation is the second largest portion of their household budget after housing at as much as 20% of expenses. With car ownership, the vast amount of your expenditures leaves the community. Most of the purchase amount goes to Detroit, Bavaria, or Japan, your loan interest and insurance premiums leave for New York or Delaware, your fuel dollars more often than not go to foreign interests with at best indifference to our nation, and this does not address the wealth lost in thin air with the heavy depreciation of car values. AAA currently estimates the average cost of owning an automobile is around $10,000/year. With the vast majority of this cost leaving our community, image the huge dividend our local economy would receive with each person who walks away from the automotive ownership trap.

Austin fancies itself a fit city. It’s time to make that more than 5 Ks and triathlons. It’s time to make good health an integrated part of most people’s lives and bike share can help make it happen.