Bikes want to be free

Most bike systems in North America, charge a yearly fee with trips capped at 30 or 45 minutes before extra fees kick in. As things stand, Santa Monica's Bike Share program will do better, with a membership fee of $20 per month for 1 hour of free riding a day, allowing people to avoid the larger upfront cost of an annual fee; and subscribers who, say, only want to ride during warmer weather can also save some money. "Casual riders," which is probably a code word for tourists, will pay $2 per 20 minutes.

By comparison, however, in Philadelphia, the U.S. city with the most bicyclists per capita, the pricing system is more affordable. Philadelphia has a $15 per month fee that offers unlimited rides up to one hour per trip. Another option there provides a year of access to the system for a base fee of $10, with a per-trip charge of $4 for rides up to one hour long. Non-members (tourists) can pay the same $4 rate for rides, but for only up to one half hour, a little higher than here.

If you want people to ride, you have to make it as affordable as possible. At the $15/mo rate, it would cost a commuter about 70 cents a day, with no expenses for bike purchase, maintenance and repairs and no worries about theft. Let's see if we can lower the monthly fee in Santa Monica and have no limit on the number of trips per day, allowing people to, say, go to the market or other errands, then to the library, then to dinner, then to the movies, without the cost and hassle of metering.

Best of all would be free bikes, like Austin's Yellow Bike program. Possible models for a free system are "bike libaries" where bikes are issued to members for specific periods and fines accrue if they are overdue on return; bike share systems that take returable deposits instead of charging fees; and advertising-supported free bikes (a geographical system similar to that used to keep carts from leaving supermarket parking lots could be used to keep bikes from gong past municipal boundaries).