Portland to experiment with rental bike system

by Mark Larabee, The Oregonian

Saturday July 04, 2009, 10:00 AM http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2009/07/portland_to_experiment_with_re.html

Ed Alcock/The New York Times/2007Paris offers a bike sharing system with self-service docking stations like this.

Think of it as a Zipcar with pedals.

Need to rent a bike quick? Walk up to a kiosk, swipe a credit or membership card and ride away. Just return it there or at another station, kind of like renting a luggage cart at the airport.

That's a far cry from the now-infamous yellow bikes -- the 1990s community bike program that died because of theft and vandalism. Those were free, unreliable and mostly clunkers.

Portland transportation officials are eying about 100 high-tech bike-sharing systems worldwide to see if an investment in public bicycles could be successful in what's already considered a world-class bike city.

They hope that two demonstration projects scheduled here for August will give them a firsthand look at a few systems and help gauge public appetite.

Washington, D.C., is the only U.S. city that has installed a system. Minneapolis, Denver, San Francisco, Chicago and Albuquerque are considering or planning systems.

The nation's capital has a 100-bike project -- small in comparison to one in Paris with 21,000 bikes and 170,000 annual subscribers -- but it's popular and working well. An expansion will begin late this year to add 900 bikes.

Even so, questions remain here and across the country about which system to install, the logistics of set-up and marketing and, most importantly, about paying for them.

"This is one time we're not going to be the first out of the gate," said Steve Hoyt-McBeth, a project manager with the Portland Bureau of Transportation.

Mayor Sam Adams, after a 2006 trip to Lyon, France, as transportation commissioner, said he wanted to set up a network here with the goals of increasing the number of bike trips, enhancing the connection between bikes and mass transit and boosting the city's already bike-savvy culture.

That likely won't come until public hearings are scheduled and the City Council votes on a plan. Portland is moving deliberately slow. For one, it has no money for the project. Last year, the city narrowed in on a vendor, then canceled the project.

Different models
The systems are expensive, about $3,400 to $4,000 per bike when you figure in the cost of docking stations, tracking and payment technology and installation costs, Hoyt-McBeth said. And it's uncertain whether user fees would fully recapture operating costs, such as maintenance, theft and vandalism.

Portland has yet to do market analysis to determine who would ride the bikes. One thing complicating that question is the fact that Portland already has one of the largest bike ridership rates in the country.

The City Auditor's Office, in a survey conducted last summer, found 8 percent of commuters came into downtown on bikes and that citywide, about 18 percent of residents use bikes as either a primary or secondary mode of transportation, Hoyt-McBeth said.

"This whole idea about throwing thousands of bikes on the street is new to us in the U.S.," Hoyt-McBeth said. "To see what it does in terms of ridership in Montreal and other cities will be really instructive for Portland."

One of the companies that committed to the Portland demonstrations is called Bixi -- created by Montreal's parking authority. Montreal developed its bike-sharing system in-house, began operating it in May and plans to sell franchises to other cities as a way to recoup the estimated $13 million start-up costs and eventually become self-sufficient.

Washington, D.C., and Paris are opposite in terms of size, but their methods are the same and cost nothing for local taxpayers. Both systems were installed by private advertising companies -- Clear Channel Outdoors in Washington and JCDecaux in Paris. Not only do they pay for themselves, both systems give money to the city in exchange for advertising rights on city-owned rights of way and transit stops.

Using that funding model may be more difficult in Portland, a small advertising market where free speech rights are loose and city officials have shied away from cluttering downtown streets with advertising at the behest of the business lobby.

Minneapolis and Denver are using a nonprofit model to run the bike-sharing programs they plan to roll out next year. With outside seed money, low operating costs, tax-exempt status and corporate donations, city officials are hoping for success without dipping into taxpayer wallets.

Barcelona paid for its system through more traditional government methods. The city increased parking rates and car registrations and own the bikes.

Lessons learned
Whatever is installed and however it's paid for, Hoyt-McBeth said the city has learned valuable lessons from watching others: You need to have a rental station every four or five blocks and bikes should be available in areas where people and jobs are concentrated. European users are 70 percent commuters, he said.

Good marketing and a smooth start early also are keys to long-term success. And a progressive rate structure, one that makes it free or really cheap in the first 30 minutes, encourages shorter trips and efficiency.

In Washington, D.C., $40 buys an annual membership and a Smartcard. Subscribers must sign up online and wait for their card in the mail. The approach cuts down on theft, but prohibits on-the-spot rentals and isn't geared toward tourists, which the city hopes to change during the expansion.

"People are using it for all kinds of trips, to go to restaurants, meetings or the dentist," said Jim Sebastian, who manages the program for the district's transportation department.

There are environmental benefits as well. "We're freeing up the need for parking spaces for people's cars," Sebastian said.

He fields calls from counterparts across the country who are looking at installing similar systems.

"Almost every city has some level of interest," he said. "As long as you already have some basic bike infrastructure and culture this will work and it will help reinforce the interest in biking."

-- Mark Larabee: marklarabee@...