Friday's Best Bike Bits! Jessica on a Velib, Boston to Embrace Sharing, JCDecaux Does Well Down Under

For a bike and alternative mobility enthusiast such as myself, pictures of Jessica Alba in Paris tooling around the town on her Velib bike-sharing bike were pure, happy joy.

Alba on her Velib reminded people why bike sharing is so popular - with traffic concerns, in many big cities it is the fastest way for anyone, celeb or pleb, to get around town. Alba's a good counterweight to all the glum news about Velib bikes' horrendous rate of vandalism and disrepair, bicyclists behaving badly, and JCDecaux's griping about the high costs and unsustainable nature of the program.

Photo Jessica Alba on a Velib via celebrity-gossip.net.

Boston must be bullish on bike sharing, as it has put out requests for proposals for a program that would start with approximately 1,500 bikes at 150 locations in a year's time. Boston's idea is for the bike-sharing program to be "a turn-key system that self finances."

In other words, a system with advertising plans, subscriber fees, and private capital investment. Though city officials estimate the program could eliminate 315,000 car trips annually, a "savings" of 750 tons of greenhouse gases annually.

Just how much does would that type of bike share system cost? Bike-sharing blog says start-up is the biggest cost (though JCDecaux griped mainly about maintenance) and estimates a 1,400 fancy-bike system would cost $6 million for two years of capitol and operating costs.

Sustainable mobility consultant Eric Britton says the cost for different systems could vary by 100 to 200 percent based on many factors - size, city environment, social context - but he uses the yardstick of US$10,000 per bike for year one of operation - in other words, $5 million for a 500 bike system. That gives a very different picture of JCDecaux's investment or returns. But Britton says for the multi-national outdoor advertising behemoth it depends on the existing contract they may have.

"JCDecaux is very, very clever," Britton said. "They are not going to be losing money."

So JCDecaux is probably coming out okay or they wouldn't be pursuing other contracts if Velib was as broken and money-losing as articles have implied. And they are - they've just inked an agreement to supply 450 bikes to Dublin in return for outdoor advertising space worth $1.25 million U.S. annually. In addition, last month JCDecaux inked a deal with Brisbane for a 2,000-bike system, and the Brisbane Times said the advertiser has systems in 16 countries worldwide.

Now if carbon emissions had a price, perhaps city officials would be a little more eager to finance this up and coming form of public transport!

Read more about bike sharing on TreeHugger
::Massive Theft, Vandalism Plaguing Parisian Bike Sharing Program
::DC Bike Sharing Program Launches Today, First in the U.S.
::San Francisco to Get Bike Sharing Program Pilot in 2009
::New York Considers Bike Share Program - From Danes
::Does Bicycle Friendliness Contribute to a City's Economic Development?

Comments

[TheBlackCat]

I live in Boston, I don't own a car, I use the subway and bus system. I am very excited about Boston's new bike share idea but I sure hope they plan on building bike lanes to accomodate them. Right now there are some places that are GREAT for bikes, like along the Charles River, and a couple of streets like Beacon have a bike lane. But for the most part there's nowhere to bike. Streets are very narrow and already overcrowded from parked cars along the sides. Boston has a HUGE number of pedestrians so riding on the sidewalk is not feasable.

We need more bike lanes if we're going to have more bikes. Boston drivers are notoriously vicious and think of driving laws as more of "guidelines", and I wouldn't feel safe riding on busy streets on a bike.

[JamesOctopus]

Ha. Bike sharing is an idea that's good on paper, and may actually work, but most of the cities it's been tried in usually just see a lot of vandalism. Vandalism and theft. A glance around Boston doesn't suggest things will be any different here. I have a friend who's owned countless bikes. 6 or 7 at least. They always, ALWAYS get stolen. Take a look at a lot of the property around here, public and private. It's all sustained at least minor damage or defacement.
The only way it's going to be self-sufficient is if you're talking pretty high fares and ridership to make up for all of the repairs and replacement.

[LMPE]

In Portland, Oregon, we have flex cars (hybrids that people share).

Jessica Alba is a fine woman.