Bike Sharing

It's been no major secret that things with Bike Nation aren't pedaling so well.

Forget the ridership numbers: you know you've hit the big time when Jon Stewart and company spend a full nine minutes satirizing you at the top of "The Daily Show."

We’ve noted before that it can be challenging to figure out exactly how much driving is avoided when someone rides a bike. But here we have it straight from the horse’s mouth – nearly 7,000 horses, in fact. According to a November 2012 survey of Capital Bikeshare members, released today, the average subscriber drove 198 miles less per year after joining the system. Multiply that by 22,200 members and that's 3.7 million pounds of CO2 that won't get belched into the atmosphere. Nice work, CaBistas!

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.

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.

Last night, the Anaheim City Council approved the first 8 kiosk locations for its bike share system, which will be owned and operated by Bike Nation.  Bike Nation announced at April's CicLAvia that it would bring 4000 bicycles and 400 kiosks to Los Angeles starting in December of this year.