Streetsblog Los Angeles

The team at BikeShare.com took a trip to Anaheim last week to look at the work completed on the first installment of Bike Nation’s Anaheim system. The above video goes into the pros and cons of Bike Nation’s design and of bicycling in Anaheim, but overall the review is pretty positive. As Matt Christensen writes on BikeShare.com:

Our journey taught us two things: First, Anaheim is not bike-friendly and, second, Bike Nation Anaheim is in its beta stage. Despite the nascence of the program and its auto-centric setting, we found the system’s components to be relatively easy to use and comfortable.

Which is not to say the review was universally positive. For example, many of the bicycles they tried were stuck in second gear and the kiosks weren’t large enough to fit all of the bicycles at their destination. But overall, they found the system easy to use and the bicycles comfortable to ride.

For more, check out the video above. Bike Nation is working on expanding the bike share system in Anaheim from 3 to 10 locations and creating systems in Tustin, Long Beach and Los Angeles.

In just under an hour, Bike Nation will publicly announce the nine locations for kiosks in its initial rollout of what is promised to be a massive bike share system for Los Angeles. Last April, Bike Nation promised a 400 kiosk, 4,000 bike bike share system to be installed in Downtown Los Angeles, Westwood, Venice and Hollywood in the next several years. The bike share company promised to invest $16 million in its system. An independent estimate from one of their competitors estimates that they could earn $40 million in revenue in the next decade.

Apparently, they’re starting the rollout in Downtown Los Angeles. That makes sense, since 175 of the promised stations will be in Downtown Los Angeles. As shown above, the first nine kiosks are planned for:

• Union Station
• El Pueblo/Olvera Street
• Caltrans Building (2)
• City Hall (2)
• County Hall of Administration Building
• LAPD (2)

“We are excited to put stations on the ground in Downtown Los Angeles and begin the process of rolling out our bike share program and providing a safe, low-cost, healthy transportation alternative to Los Angeles residents,” writes Derek Fretheim, Bike Nation Chief Operating Officer. “The Company has already begun its site planning in anticipation of the City Council Motion and created a sample permit package consisting of initial station locations.”

Rather than go through a standard “Request for Proposal” process as has been done with the other large bike share systems in America, Bike Nation gave Los Angeles another option. Bike Nation approached the mayor’s office with a simple proposal, if Los Angeles creates a permitting system to operate private bike share on public property, then Bike Nation would invest in creating a private bike share system. Read more…

Bike Nation, the bike share company that has struck deals to bring bike sharing to Anaheim, Long Beach and Los Angeles, unveiled a new bicycle design today at the Pro Walk Pro Bike conference in Long Beach. The “Gen 2 Made in the U.S.A. Bicycles,” (G2) will be used in Long Beach and Los Angeles, with the first generation  (G1) of bicycles going to Anaheim.

Bike Nation also announced that the G2 bicycles will be built in a facility in Southern California, unlike the G1 bicycles that were made by Rugged Cycles in Texas. An announcement on which company will be making Bike Nation’s G2 bikes is expected soon. Today, Bike Nation boasted that it is “supporting and sustaining manufacturing jobs and projects to create 150+ service jobs through 2013.”

“As we continue to grow bike share throughout Southern California and the country it was vitally important to us that we manufacture our bikes in the United States,” said Derek Fretheim, Bike Nation Chief Operating Officer. “Bike share programs have had great success in major metropolises around the world and, as an American-based company, we look forward to being an industry leader in providing cost-effective and eco-friendly options to commuters and visitors alike.”

Just because a bicycle is made in America and is “made in the U.S.A. certified” doesn’t mean that every part comes from America, especially when some of the custom parts needed aren’t made in any American factories. In Bike Nation’s case, several parts of the G2 bicycles come from other countries including bike gears, hubs and the shaft. However, that doesn’t impact the “Made in the U.S.A. certification” because those parts are not made in the United States.

Both G1 and G2 designs have are chainless and feature active GPS technology and airless tires, helping reduce the need for on-road service. Both have baskets in the front and wheel covers in the rear emblazoned with the Bike Nation logo. The kiosks for both bicycles look to be identical.

So what’s different? G1 bicycles used the frame from Rugged Cycles as the base. Builders then built the rest of the bicycles to specifications provided by Bike Nation.  Bike Nation redesigned the base frame from the single tube design in the G1 bicycles to a double tube design in G2. According to Fretheim, this won’t lead to any changes in the rider experience, but allowed them to purchase less parts from foreign companies. It’s not noticeable in the pictures, but there’s also a change in the basket design and mating dock where the bikes attach to the kiosks.

Bike Nation also claims the G2 bicycles are also made of 100% recycled metal and materials (certification pending.) Read more…

The Long Beach City Council, in a 9-0 vote, will permit Bike Nation to launch a 10-year, $12 million bike share program in the city, thereby creating one of the largest of its kind in the state.

Bike Nation, which manufactures its own GPS-equipped, airless-tires bicycles, was inspired by similar systems that developed in Europe, such as the successful DublinBikes in Ireland and Bicing in Barcelona. “Our business philosophy is that our bike share systems become part of the overall transportation fabric,” stated Jeff Pomeroy of Bike Nation. “It’s to provide our customers with a healthier way to experience their community; one without being encapsulated in an automobile.”

In addition to Bike Nation programs in Anaheim, Downtown Los Angeles, Westwood, Hollywood, and areas throughout Venice Beach, Long Beach will join the ranks as one of the largest with 250 kiosks that will allow citizens to access some 2,500 bikes throughout the city beginning Downtown in February of next year. With a Bike Nation membership, one can access bicycles in any city that has Bike Nation kiosks. In other words, a member ship purchased in Long Beach will work in Los Angeles or Anaheim or anywhere else Bike Nation opens shop.

Unlike some other cities, Long Beach’s Bike Nation program will be entirely paid for by the company, which has been working with the city since 2009. For Bike Nation, Long Beach had four essential components: quality bike infrastructure, community support for bicycling, a bike-able climate, and commitment from the city’s officials and staff. Read more…

It’s been a big week for Bike Nation. While most media will note their plans to bring 2,500 bikes to the City of Long Beach for another Southern California bike share program, a smaller project is going to get big attention in the Los Angeles bicycle community.

Yesterday, Bike Nation announced that registered users can submit locations to them through an online mapping program for bike sharing kiosks in Downtown Los Angeles. Earlier this year, Bike Nation announced plans to bring 4,000 bikes to a bike share program in Los Angeles focusing on Downtown, Hollywood, Westwood and Venice Beach. The Downtown is expected to be the first community to see the kiosks, hopefully by the end of this year.

But where will the bike kiosks go? Bike Nation has been mum on details, but has announced that they will be on both public and private land. The new “suggest a station” web map gives anyone a chance to tell Bike Nation where the kiosks ought to go or give a thumbs up or down to the ones already suggested.

“We understand that the success of a bike share program is based on providing affordable and, most importantly, accessible kiosks located within close proximity to areas of community-interest,” writes Bike Nation Chief Operating Officer Derek Fretheim. ”This online campaign provides a voice to the community and is something we will certainly take into account as we determine the best kiosk locations in our network.”

Directions on how to use the website, provided by Bike Nation, are after the jump. Read more…

Created with flickr slideshow.This Saturday, Bike Nation launched Southern California’s first bike share system in Anaheim. While no Streetsblog writer managed to attend, we’ll make it a little later this week to try out the bikes, kiosks and registration without Bike Nation staff there to help us out.  But one of our intrepid readers, Erik Griswold, did make the trip.  He reports that the opening was “sparesly attended,” at least when he was there at 11 a.m. Regardless of the size, Bike Nation is open in Anaheim.

His pictures are featured in the above slide show.

For more on the opening, check out the story on NBC 4.

On the morning of April 15th, Mayor Villaraigosa walked up to the press conference kicking off CicLAvia and announced that Bike Nation, a new bike share company, would invest $16 million in creating a bike share program for Los Angeles.  Bike Nation would bring 4,000 bikes, 400 kiosks to communities in Downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, Westwood and Venice Beach.  Of that $16 million, 70% is for capital (kiosks, bikes, etc…) and 30% is for bike share operations.

The announcement caught nearly everyone off guard.  Outside of a small group of CicLAvia Board Members and media members the city had kept a tight lid on the announcement.

While the secrecy helped make a big splash at L.A.’s biggest Livable Streets event, it also led to confusion and criticism from some quarters that one would expect to be sympathetic.  Rumors swirled, including one that Bike Nation was an AEG front group (it’s not).  Others attacked Bike Nation for exaggerating the uniqueness of their patented chain free bicycles or for biting off more than they can chew by promising the nation’s second largest bike share program.

Further complicating things, Bike Nation’s relationship with Los Angeles is different than the model used in most cities.

In the year before Bike Nation announced it was coming to Los Angeles, Metro was working with a handful of bike share vendors to bring bike sharing to Los Angeles County including Bike Nation, B-Cycles and Alta Bike Share, a partner with Alta Planning and Design.  At the time, many assumed that when bike share did come to Los Angeles, it would be a subsidized program similar to the ones in Washington D.C. and the one coming to New York this year.  When a bike share program is subsidized, a formal Request for Proposals (RFP) is released where vendors compete for the contract and funding.  Their proposals show where they will place bikes, how many they can place in certain locations and what the other revenue streams to support the system are.

But Bike Nation’s business model doesn’t require a subsidization which frees them from some of the commitments required by an RFP.  Between what it charges users, and what it will sell in advertising, Bike Nation expects to make a large profit over the next decade in Los Angeles.  A rival company estimated that the advertising that could come from a functioning bike share system with 4,000 bikes could be $40 million over the next decade or 250% of Bike Nation’s initial investment.

As Lisa Sarno, with the Mayor’s office put it, Bike Nation’s offer “Allowed the city to leverage and speed up the process for bike share.”

Seeing the opportunity, Bike Nation came to the city of Los Angeles not with a proposal but with a request.  “Create a system to permit bike share installation and we’ll make the investment to make that system work.”  Bike Nation has repeatedly said it didn’t have an exclusive deal with the city, and they’re right.  They have a commitment to apply for permits to put in kiosks and bikes.  In this way, Bike Nation skipped the RFP and went straight to permitting and soon thereafter installation.

“To date, bike sharing systems have been reliant on government funding and ongoing operational subsidies,” explains Derek Fretheim, the Chief Operating Officer for Bike Nation.  “We saw a way to create a bike share program without using those subsidies and began promoting a private venture strategy earlier this year.”

City staff believe they can have the permitting system created by the fall so installation can begin before the end of the year.  “Quite frankly, this is the first time we’ve done this in the City of Los Angeles,” Sarno says of creating the bike share permitting process.

Such an arrangement has one obvious benefit for the city: it will have a bike share system it couldn’t afford to pay for.  But there are drawbacks.  If one considers bike sharing as a form of public transit, a system where the local government has less say on placement, upkeep, bicycle conditions and other safety issues is just that: a system where the government has less say on placement, upkeep, bicycle conditions and other safety issues.  Read more…

Last week, we asked you to write questions for Navin Narang, an executive with First Pacific Holdings, the company that owns Bike Nation.  Bike Nation is the company that will bring 4,000 bikes and 400 kiosks for Los Angeles’ first official bike sharing system over the next eighteen months.  Barring any changes, L.A.’s collaboration with Bike Nation will be the second largest bike share system in the country, trailing only the mammoth system coming to New York this year.

Streetsblog readers asked some complicated questions and a couple of members of the Bike Nation team helped draft the answers.  So with a thank you to Jeff Pomeroy, Ethan Fiamingo, Navin Narang, Brad Barlow, and Derek Fretheim, we present Bike Nation’s answers to your questionnaire.

1.Will Bike Nation make real-time system data available to the public and developers as Alta Bicycle Share has done in the markets they serve?  This enables third-party applications that enhance user experience.  It also has created a high quality dataset available for bicycle planning in those cities. 

Bike Nation is the only bike sharing system in the world that uses Active Real Time GPS on our Bikes and Kiosks, which allows the user to get real-time live information on multiple devices and on their member profile online. Bike Nation will be open to data sharing as long as the applications being developed by outside entities don’t duplicate Bike Nation’s efforts, confuse the general public or breach confidential Membership information.

2. Existing bike share applications have found lower than expected use among college students and lower income individuals. Will Bike Nation work with Universities to subsidize memberships for students, and with community foundations and organizations to subsidize or administer outreach programs to lower income individuals? Is there other plans to work with universities to make certain locations are available for students to utilize bike share on campus? 

Along with providing discounted student rates, we are currently working with several of the larger Universities in Southern California to implement a Bike Sharing system on campuses that connects with the public system, which would be subsidized through the Universities. We are also working with Multiple Transit Authorities in Southern California to tie into their low-income programs, allowing the same types of benefits currently extended to them by the Transit Authority on other public transit on our Bike Sharing Program. Read more…