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A crash course in changing the world.
Bicycle Sharing System
I recently moved to Paris and gained first-hand exposure to their bike sharing system. You can find out everything you need to know about the details from the company's website or, if you don't speak French, the wiki is pretty comprehensive. For those of you unfamiliar with the system, I'll try to quickly summarize.
OVERVIEW:
Paris is just one example of a well organized bike sharing system continuously becoming more prevalent in Europe. The current system was implemented in 2007 with 750 stations and 10,000 bikes but has grown to 1,450 stations with 20,000 bikes - making it the largest system of its kind in the world. The stations in the city center are roughly 300 meters apart (the above photo was taken from a station about 100 meters from the front door of my building).
SYSTEM
The bikes in the Paris system are all 3-speed, 22.5 kg, and come with a basket, LED light, and lock. The towers are where you check in to get the bike and have information about payment and nearby stations, should the station you are at be empty or full. A crew goes around at night and redistributes bikes.
RATES
You pay a membership fee (e5 week or e29 month) and then you pay per use. If you check out a bike for less than 30 min its free, but after 30 min the rates climb exponentially (see table below). YOU MUST HAVE A CREDIT CARD TO GET A BIKE, and are liable if it goes missing.
IMPLEMENTATION
Typically, these systems are put in place by large corporations take it on as a for-profit enterprise (the financing scheme for the Paris system seems pretty convoluted). In Paris the company that installed the system also handles repairs and replacements. Here, theft and vandalism is a serious issue and exceeded initial expectations. Nevertheless, ridership demand still exceeds current capacity and the system is set to expand again.
QUESTIONS:
1) The most successful systems involve major up-front capital investment, which tends to be provided by large corporations. How could such companies be convinced that Africa is the next place they should invest? Which city would make an ideal pilot?
2) One of the major benefits of the system is that you don't have to have money to buy a bike in order to have access to one. The key to the system functioning properly is getting users to take financial responsibility for the bike they are using. How can the credit-based rental system be re-imagined? Is it realistic to imagine wide-spread credit card use in the near future (or does it already exist in major urban centers)?
3) Is the threat of theft and vandalism too great to make such systems viable?
4) Could the system be modified for a rural application?
Views: 48
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Comment by Bianca on March 21, 2010 at 12:39pm
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What about GPS tracking system? If everybody knows where specific bicycle is located, nobody is gonna steal it.
Using in rural areas: well, I think it is applicable. After all, it is all about people...
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Comment by David Dewane on March 21, 2010 at 1:10pm
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Thanks for the comments. I understand that the temptation to steal the bikes is overwhelming (many of the bikes stolen from the Paris system are thought to have made their way to Africa). That is why putting the user on the hook for the value of the bike is key. However, if the value of the bike is more than they can afford to pay in the event it does get stolen then the system breaks down. I can see two potential ways out - maybe a combination of them is the best:
1. Bring the cost of the bike down as far as possible, so that if it does get lost the penalty is not backbreaking. The cost of the Paris bikes are widely quoted from e300 per bike to e1000+. But if a bike goes missing the user only has to pay e150. That is clearly too high for Africa. But if you could build a bike for e25 maybe it would work. You have to go into this acknowledging that bikes will go missing (which is not entirely bad, actually). The system just has to be resilient enough to keep replacing them. In the Paris system that is achieved by transferring a major portion of the replacement cost to the users. That seems like the only logical option.
2. Find a good starting point. It seems like each system in Europe is a little different (even if they are installed by the same corporation). This suggests that they are refining the system based on lessons learned. Africa is going to be totally different than Europe in many respects. Therefore, if you can find a city with a low crime rate but large enough to realize major benefits from this system perhaps it could serve as a test case that would be least likely to crash. I just don't know where that might be.
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Comment by Rahul Dewanjee on March 21, 2010 at 7:22pm
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+1 for Entrepreneurship. Excellent:) This is absolutely doable. Even though this may have to be modified a bit. I see a long tail of opportunity. Let me explain:
In Hooghly (a massive district) in West Bengal that connect to Howrah Station (the nerve center of railways in eastern India, we have a very efficient railway lines that ordinary commuters use. There are 26 stations between Chander Nagore (farthest point) and Howrah covering an incredible 26 towns that grew beside the corresponding railway stations. Every morning, people cycle to their nearest railway station and hand over the cycle to a local shack (will post pictures soon to show how it currently looks) and rushes to catch the train. In the evening when they come back from their work again using the trains, they go and collect the cycle and ride home. Now we are talking on an average of 8 hours that the cycle stays in that shack. This is opportunity space.
Can we devise a proposition that enables to use these cycles as resources and connect to those who can't even afford a cycle to do things that they can to make money? What kind of 'trust frameworks' should be necessary? How can we tie up advertising agencies, corporates and non-profits to take advantage of this simple resource: a cycle? Can we scale it up? what kind of communication can we design to make cycling a personal statement? Can we fit out an electronic gadget in the cycle that tells us how much distance we covered without burning fossil fuels and then upload carbon credits by syncing that fit-out gadget with the mobile phone or Global Positioning System (GPS)?
Door to door sales are increasing every day and more and more women are getting involved in them - from selling insurance, posting a courier, picking up telephone bills to pay and supporting home delivery food...the list is endless...so there is a way this can be a rual application.
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Comment by Luke Sargent on March 21, 2010 at 11:35pm
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Last summer I spoke with a group who were taking broken down beater bikes in Toronto Canada, repairing them, and filling up a cargo container to send to Africa and sharing them with the people of Malawi. http://www.bikeswithoutborders.org/
One of the things that they noticed about the bikes wasn't theft, but that culturally everybody "owned" these bikes, and were entitled to use any bike that wasn't being ridden right now. So to north Americans it looks like theft, but there it was more of an unspoken sharing mechanism. Y'know, the village bicycle: everybody gets a ride!!
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Comment by Patricio Buenrostro-Gilhuys on March 22, 2010 at 5:04am
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I agree with Alexandru it must be a trust based system. There must be mechanisms so it´s socially frowned upon if someone takes this bikes.
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Comment by Shakwei Mbindyo on March 22, 2010 at 10:59am
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+1 Creativity. Wow, I had never heard of this. A few quick thoughts (1) in most rural areas the distance from a residental home to a commercial center is usually far (2) many of the rural road are actually just paths created by long use therefore the bicycles would need to be hardy (3) Many developing countries have bicycle taxis (commonly called boda boda in Kenya) where a bicycle is modified to have a sit where the driver can carry a passenger. These boda bodas have now been "upgraded" to incldue motorcycles (4) Women generally do not ride bicycles in Kenya. Will theft be an issue? Certainly. Do I think this shared system can work in Africa? Perhaps with proper adjustments to suit the facts of the groud.
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Thanks for the zero-gravity comments Rahul. It will take some time to process but I love them. There is a pattern between Rahul, Luke, and Shakwei's comments, which is each location is totally ideosncyratic. For this to take root you'd have to find the right location and understanding it's unique set of challenges. Africa is so enormous and diverse I have to believe there is an ideal candidate city out there. Large to benefit from economy of means and low crime seem to be the two most important qualities to start with. I'll do some more digging and post any progress. Thanks again.
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Comment by Keith Adam Britt on March 24, 2010 at 12:46am
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God! I wish we had the infrastructure to support something like this in the States.
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Comment by Jessica Gomes on March 24, 2010 at 3:15am
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i think this could be a great idea in sydney as well
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Kieth, I think we absolutely have the infrastructure. What we lack is the attitude and the willingness to re-appropriate elements of our current infrastructure. From what I gather, Parisians were not as avid a biking culture as their Dutch neighbors. The system here is different from a bunch of private citizens buying bikes and hitting the streets. The city greatly expanded the quality and quantity of bike lanes at the expense of car traffic lanes, but the reduction in traffic seems to have balanced this shift. In the last few years I've lived in Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. ALL of those cities could employ this system if someone (be it the municipality or a private investor) installed and maintained the system and the city made the concession of bike lanes and curb side parking. Do you really think it couldn't work in Fayetteville or Charlotte? Why not? YOU could start it.
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