Bike Sharing

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.

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.

For your viewing, here's the animation produced by Transport for London explaining how to use Barclays Cycle Hire -- the 570-station bike-share system that launched about two years ago. There's a lot to cover in a little more than four minutes: when bike-share is useful, how to get a membership, what not to do with your bike, how to handle a bike that needs repair, and so forth.