Bikeshare should help get people out of their cars.

Bike riding supporters might want to reserve next Tuesday for a visit to Santa Monica's City Hall. The city council will be considering how to proceed with the bikeshare program. As the Santa Monica Daily Press reports, the “bikeshare will allow riders to check out one of the system’s 500 bikes from one of 75 locations in the city and drop it off at another.”

As proposed, the pricing for the system does not seem to be designed to maximize bike use, presumably the intended goal. “For an hour of riding, a tourist or an infrequent user will pay $6....More frequent riders can pay $20 per month for 30 minutes of daily riding time or $25 per month for an hour of daily riding. A basic annual pass — which gives users 30 minutes of usage 365 days of the year — will run $119 and an extended pass, which bumps that ride time to an hour, would cost $149.” This seems like an extension of the metering model used for parking, which runs contrary to the goal of maximizing use.

Why have time limits on use at all? If we really want locals and visitors to use bikes as transportation, it would make more sense to allow people to ride as much as they want. Thus, a user could, for example, ride to work, ride to and from lunch, stop at the library, pick up some groceries, stop for dinner, go the movies, meet for a drink, and go home. System bikes would be required to be returned to stations when not being ridden, thus freeing them up for other users.

“For Santa Monica residents, the basic annual pass will cost only $79 and the extended $99. Santa Monica College students are offered the greatest discount: $47 for six months of 60 minute daily riding.The $6 an hour casual fee simply buys 60 minutes of ride time that never expires. For monthly and annual passes, however, daily minutes do not roll over.”

Why limit the discount to Santa Monica residents? There are many thousands of non-Santa Monica westsiders who will be within walking distance of stations and should be encouraged to take bikes when going to Bergamot Station, Third Street, the beach or the pier. Also, don’t we want to encourage as many of the people who live elsewhere but work in Santa Monica to use bikes? The same discount should apply to employees as to residents.

“One of the things that city officials loved about the operator they selected, CycleHop, is that their technology allows bikes to be returned to locations other than the 75 stations throughout the city. If a bike is returned to a regular bike rack — even if it’s not an official station — within the Santa Monica-area, riders will only pay an additional $2. If a rider hops on that bike, which is not connected to an official Breeze rack, and returns it to a Breeze station, she’ll get a $1 credit for bikeshare usage. If a bike is locked up outside of the Santa Monica-area, the rider will pay a $20 fee. If a bike is returned to a generic bike rack within 100 feet of a hub that is full, the rider won’t be charged $2.”

This is all well and good, but it raises another question. Technology has advanced since the first bikeshare programs were installed in other cities. One change is that there is no longer a justification for a capital-intensive investment in stations. Bikes can be fitted easily with wireless devices that keep track of bikes wherever they are and allow them to be locked and unlocked by a downloadable app that will also keep track of payments. Users would be able to see the location of the nearest available bike. Such a system might make it possible to eliminate passes altogether, replacing them with incremental micro-charges, either capped or greatly reduced by frequent use. Being a laggard should be made to work to Santa Monica’s advantage.

Parenthetically, technology is also available to make the bikes cease to function if they are removed from the city, further lessening the need for expensive stations.

Additionally, it would make sense to explore whether there is a need for a system that would allow employees to pay an extra fee to take bikes home. This might make particular sense for SMC and private school students who live in nearby cities. This would increase the number of bikes available during working (and school) hours and encourage employees (and students) to use bikes on their off days when they return to shop, eat, go to the movies, Pier concerts, the beach, etc. Even if it cost double or triple the standard annual rate (see, next paragraph), it still might be worth it to people who do not want to purchase, maintain and repair a bike of their own.

So, assuming the bike stations are here to stay, here’s a proposal:
$6/day available to anyone for an unlimited number of trips and no limit on time.
$15/month available to anyone for an unlimited number of daily trips and no limit on time. This would encourage tourists staying three days or longer to pay the fee to have use of bikes throughout their stay.
$60/annual pass available to residents and employees for an unlimited number of daily trips and no limit on time. A student discount should be considered for the annual fee.

The rest of the story: Santa Monica bikeshare still on schedule; rates proposed by David Mark Simpson (Santa Monica Daily Press).

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).

Alternative and shared-use bridges

While we await the opportunity to cap the I-10 and reunite Santa Monica's neighborhoods, we can do a lot for the city's walking and biking populations by building three or four pedestrian/bike bridges. The I-10 overpasses at 4th St. and at Lincoln Blvd., also, are in especially desperate need of makeovers to make them safer and more attractive to walkers and cyclists.

(Credit: CityLab.com)

More:
The Bright Future of the Pedestrian Bridge: Top engineer Ted Zoli says the era of shared-use structures has arrived.
Can a Beehive-Inspired Overpass Unite a City?: New Britain, Connecticut, is split by a highway overpass—which is also the city's main street. Will a high-design walkway bridge deep divisions?

Away, Segway!

I tweeted the other day: "Why are bicycles hassled on sidewalks but Segways, usually piloted by inexperienced renters w/o a clue, can go anywhere?"

Came this reply: "I'm gonna guess because there's a law against riding a bike on the sidewalk and there aren't any laws about Segways."

Wrong guess. Beach regulations specifically prohibit motorized vehicles on the bike path -- but they're there. And the CA Vehicle Code section 407.5 defines a motorized scooter as any two-wheeled device that has handle bars, is designed to be stood or sat upon by the operator and is powered by an electric or gas motor. Drivers must be over 16 and wear proper head gear.

Children are put at the controls of Segways routinely in Santa Monica. In general, Segway riders seem to have helmets; pedestrians, skaters and cyclists they endanger, not so much.

More to the point, "Operator shall not operate motorized scooter upon sidewalk." [CVC 21235(g)].

So the real question is, why does the City of Santa Monica, whose police department is targeting bicyclists and chases other types of motor scooter off the bike path, make an exception for Segways? One reason might be as simple as class; Segways are a toy of people with money. Speaking of money, another reason might be that the City makes dough off Segway rentals. Or -- money again -- the City is afraid of a lawsuit by Segway, an aggressive national company, if Segway Inc is inconvenienced. The cops say that the city attorney has redefined Segways as wheelchairs, thus exempting them from vehicle rules, but that legal fig leaf defies common sense and common usage and was adopted only after other bike path users insisted that the motorized vehicle rule be enforced (by the way, Segway Inc. calls its scooters "personal electric balancing transportation," "robotic mobility platforms" and "Personal Transporters" -- no mention of wheelchairs).

Not to make a mountain out of a molehill (oh, heck, why not): there is little argument that police and prosecutors have discretionary authority to selectively enforce laws, to make exceptions in the interest of justice, compassion or public safety; but selective enforcement with regard to entire classes of offenders or offenses is a symptom of tyranny. A government that routinely applies arbitrary standards to the question of who can operate outside the rule of law in one area will soon find it easier to afford the same favor to friends, political allies and anyone with a pile of cash. Even where favoritism doesn't lead to corruption, it undermines respect for law. There are so many ways today in which respect for law is being undermined by selective enforcement big (banksterism, for example) and small (putting your tongue in your cheek and calling a Segway a wheelchair) that citizens must push back where they can.

Segway can make a valuable contribution to traffic gridlock. The vision of a throng of Segways ferrying commuters who have abandoned their cumbrous, polluting, gas guzzlers for the freedom and frugality of scooters is exciting. Factoring cost, size and weight, emissions, and so on, Segways are far cheaper and safer to operate than cars weighing more a ton and in most cases spewing air pollutants (even a Prius weighs 2900 lbs). The City of Santa Monica has banished bikes from sidewalks (arbitrarily, it seems to me -- Los Angeles doesn't do so, and state law doesn't require it), but once you've made the decision that bikes are unsafe on sidewalks, it makes no sense at all not to hold the faster, heavier Segways to the same standards.

No Comment Department: Safe Streets

From the BicycleLaw.com blog:

In the Netherlands, the law imposes a rebuttable presumption of liability on drivers -- if a motorist is involved in a crash with a cyclist, the law presumes that the motorist is liable for the crash, unless the motorist can rebut that presumption with evidence to the contrary. The reason for this shift is that the Dutch recognized that the cyclist will virtually always be the injured party in a collision with an automobile, and by putting the onus of fault on the driver, have provided motorists with a powerful legal incentive to pay more attention to the presence of cyclists.

Planning: Paris Aims to Cut Traffic With Bikes

In Santa Monica, we think it's a big deal to offer validated parking for bicycles.

Elsewhere in the country, in such places as Austin, Boulder, San Francisco, Madison, Minneapolis, Oakland, Boston, Seattle, Athens (Georgia) and Lawrence (Kansas), the city governments are devoted to expanding the use of bicycles to mitigate traffic and air pollution, providing hundreds of miles of bike trails and dedicated traffic lanes to thousands of commuters.

But nowhere has an American city gone as far as Paris (France, not Texas) where, according to a story today in the New York Times, city hall launched a new municipal service that has placed 10,600 bikes at 750 stations all over town.

Any user can rent and return a bike from any station anywhere in the city. A yearlong pass for the service costs $39.50, a one-day pass goes for $1.36, and a seven-day ticket is $6.80. But the project is designed for short rides (the first half hour is free) and is priced on a sliding scale to keep the bikes in rotation.

The program, called Velib' from the words for bike (velo) and liberty (liberte), is being pushed by Socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoe who, like his counterparts in London and New York, has made fighting traffic and pollution his No. 1 goal.

For Parisians, the bicycle service means another public transport option, in addition to the subway, buses and trams, Delanoe said.

"In the morning, you can go to work in the tram and come home by bike; it depends on the weather, it depends on your mood and on your friends," Delanoe said at the launch.

Business was brisk the first day, according to the Times. The service is accessible to tourists as well as residents; it's offered in eight languages, and its machines accept foreign credit cards.

Paris is following the example of other European cities with inexpensive bicycle services, including Stockholm, Vienna, Brussels, Barcelona and Copenhagen. The City of Light now has 230 miles of bike lanes.

Full disclosure: I suggested a similar idea for Santa Monica a couple of years ago. General hilarity ensued. He who laughs last, though. I'm just sayin'.

The rest of the story: The New York Times

Update: French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality by Steven Erlanger and Maia de la Baume (New York Times 2009-10-30)

Bike to Work Week 2007 Event Calendar!

Here's a list of some events happening during Bike to Work Week 2007 (see next post).

Monday May 14, 2007

Downtown LA Bike Rally and Concert
City of Los Angeles City Hall, South Lawn
11:30 am to 1:30 pm
Festivities ­ include Ed Begley, Jr. and other speakers, health and bike fair, custom bike show, and a live concert by the Ditty Bops!

Bike Week Pasadena
C.I.C.L.E. and the City of Pasadena along with Patagonia and Metro are hosting more than 15 events all week! Highlights include:
Mayor's Bike to Work Brigade led by Bill Bogaard, bicycling aficionado and Mayor of Pasadena.
Themed bike tours like the Sunset Sonata Ride: cycle to an enchanting overlook on the Arroyo Seco, complete with hors d'oeuvres and a live violin and cello duet.
Free bicycle-related films and documentaries screened outdoors nightly in the One Colorado Courtyard.
An Urban Bicycle Commuter Expo featuring folding and electric bicycles, accessories, cargo bikes and trailers that handle everything from shopping trips to hauling lumber. More info www.cicle.org/cicle_content/pivot/entry.php?id=1373

Tuesday May 15, 2007

4th Annual Blessing of the Bicycles
Good Samaritan Hospital, 616 S. Witmer Avenue, Los Angeles CA 90017
8:00 am to 9:30 am
More info www.goodsam.org

El Segundo Bike Challenge
El Segundo and surrounding areas
For more information call Devon Deming at 310 646-7775

Thursday May 17, 2007 — Bike to Work Day

IlluminateLA Bike to Work Day Pitstop and Bike Ride
Hollywood and Western Metro Station
7:00 am ­ 10:00 am.
More info www.illuminatela.com/Calendar/Community.html

Free rides for bicyclists on transit www.metro.net/biketowork/free_rides.htm

Free countywide pit stops www.metro.net/biketowork/pit_stops.htm

Saturday May 19, 2007

4th Annual Bike Tour and Festival at Jesse Owens Park
More info http://www.richesbiz.com/cityweb/cityweb.htm

C.I.C.L.E. Urban Bicycle Commuter Expo
One Colorado Courtyard, Old Town Pasadena
10:00 am to 5:00 pm
More info www.cicle.org/cicle_content/pivot/entry.php?id=1373

Transportation: L.A. County Bike to Work Week May 14 - 18

(From the Metro website)

For the 13th straight year a record number of cyclists are expected to give bicycle commuting a try and leave their cars at home. Bike to Work Week is May 14 – 18, 2007.

Be part of the solution and PLEDGE not only to bike to work but pledge for a better you and for a better LA. Bicycling reduces traffic, improves the environment, improves your health and even saves you money on gas.

Pledge online today! Get a free bicycle patch kit (while supplies last) just for pledging. And, be automatically entered to win prizes. Visit our Riders page for more on planning your ride to work.

Free Rides on Thursday, May 17 from participating transit agencies. Just board with your bike or helmet.

Stop by at Metro’s co-sponsored Pit Stops on Thursday, May 17! Metro is teaming up with a number of Los Angeles County organizations, employers and merchants to host local pit stops for all Bike to Work participants. Pit stops are locations for bicyclists to stop, relax, get energized, have snacks, receive give-aways (all for free), and obtain informational materials on bicycling to work. Check back for LA County Pit Stop locations.

Employers take action! Thank your employees for bicycling to work by setting-up food and refreshments for them or by going all out and having a fair. Whatever you decide on, REGISTER with Metro to receive free give-away items to support your event. See our Employers page to register and for more information.

Be part of the solution and use your pedal power on Bike to Work Day Thursday,
May 17!