3as Jornadas de Bicicleta Pública in Santander

Between 13 and 16 October Santander was host to the fair "3as Jornadas de Bicicleta Pública" which was concentrated on public bike sharing system.

The conclusions of the fair.

- bike sharing system have a future and many cities have plans of introducing one
- public bikes function well also in medium cities
- subsidies are crucial to implantation of a bike sharing system
- secure bike parkings are the thing of the future
- data about the positive influence of bike sharing systems on the health of the citizens is slowly emerging
- bike sharing system implementation is cheaper than usually perceived

During the fair the Bicibox module was presented. You can look at the pictures on Flickr or our Facebook page. Many cities stated their interest in the system.

You can find more information (in Spanish) about the fair on the site http://www.fundacionecabv.org/

Bike sharing systems financing and implementation models Part 1

 

Since the introduction of the first bike sharing systems in the 60. the financing and implementations models have evolved.

The idea of first bike sharing systems in the 60. was that the city would buy bikes and leave them on the street for shared use of all the citizens. In Amsterdam, to encourage the council to implement this idea activists from the radical group Provo left a couple dozen white bikes on the streets and let everybody use them. Even though the initiative was a failure (bikes were either stolen or confiscated by the police) it is always mentioned as the first bike sharing initiative in the world. In the following years the bike sharing systems that were introduced were exclusively financed and maintained by cities. 

The breakthrough came when Clear Channel came up with the idea of introducing a bike sharing system in Rennes called Vélo à la Carte that would be financed with revenues from the street furniture contract. Thanks to this idea Clear Channel won the contract for street furniture in Rennes over JCDecaux.

This started the advertisement war between the companies. JCDecaux filed a lawsuit against Clear Channel about the public bikes. Clear Channel answered with suing JCDecaux for unfair competition.

The next battle of the war took place in 2007 in Paris during the tender for street furniture advertising. First the tender was won by Clear Channel with an offer of 14.000 bikes, but JCDecaux was able to have the contract broken for a legal flaw. In the end it was the French advertising giant who won the tender with an offer 20.000 bikes. And so the Velib’ was born. 

The street furniture business model looks as follows:

Girocleta bike sharing system is 2 years old!

It’s been exactly two years since the Girocleta bike sharing system was opened to the public. On 28 of September 2009 the inauguration took place. Since that moment the system has been growing in popularity. Now it has more than 1.600 registered users.

The name of the system was chosen in a public voting. “Girocleta” got 303 votes (29.4%), the second proposal “Girobici” got 298 votes (only 5 votes of diference!). It was opened with 8 stations, 200 individual stations for bicycles and 160 bikes.

You can check out some beauty shots of the bike sharing system on Flickr.

An if you’re interested in some data about functioning of the system check out our previous post.

Happy birthday!

www.IcnitaEmovity.com

Girocleta bike sharing statistics October 2009 - April 2011

It’s been almost two years since the Girocleta public bike sharing system was inaugurated. The bike sharing system in Girona has been functioning since Autumn 2009 and now we are presenting the data to sum up this period.

Girocleta has over 1600 registered users who made 221.214 trips with the bikes! 

On an average day bicycles are borrowed 350 times, but the maximum number of 850 borrowings was noted. The lowest number of borrowings was 90.

Below you can see the distribution of users by gender (D - Female, H - Male)

The following graph shows  the distribution of users by age:

 

Here you can see usage during the days of the week (1-Sunday):

 

And the last graph shows the distribution of borrowing during the day:

 

 That's about it. It seems that Girocleta is doing pretty well and complements the public transportation system in Girona quite well.

If you'd like to find more information about Girocleta visit Emovity's site about the project.

www.icnitaemovity.com

PUBLIC BIKES OR PUBLIC BIKE PARKINGS?

Juan hartsuaga published an interesting presentations (in Spanish) on Prezi, where you can see all the pros and cons of introducing two solutions to promote cycling in the city – public bikes and public bike parkings.

Under the advantages of bike sharing he lists the fact that it’s been present for many years and also doesn’t have much impact on the urban landscape.  The competition on the market leads to better and more effective solutions.

On the other hand, bike sharing systems are very costly (e. g. Barcelona spends €18 million to support the system and London will spend £140 million over 6 years) and they might be very inconvenient and annoying for the users if they can’t find any free bike at the station.

The bicycle parkings are much cheaper as far as maintenance is concerned but they might require a major investment to install, especially old, conventional systems. As there is no need to redistribute bikes the operating costs can be kept quite low. They are very convenient for the users who can use their own, personalized bikes and don’t have to care if they find any free bike (but they might care if they find a free place).

Cities that want to make life easier for cyclists definitely have a tough choice. They can make cycle paths, introduce bike sharing or bicycle parkings.

Bike sharing systems definitely have a very positive impact on cycling in the city.  Miguel Bea Alonso in his work says they might be more effective in promoting cycling in cities than cycle paths. They are definitely a good way to make people start treating cycling as a usual way of moving across the city and make them part of urban transport system along with metro and buses. In Girona the system is already treated by the citizens as a usual means of transport.

Bicycle parkings should be introduced when there already are some cyclists in the city and their main concern is safety.  These solutions are quite expensive to implement, but on the other hand they don’t have a high maintenance cost. With a system like Bicibox the whole bike parking system can even sustain itself with small subscription fees of users. In Icnita we also thought about keeping the initial investment costs down so we made it very easy simple to install (no public works involved). Also central control of the system makes it ultimately secure.  After the parkings are introduced in the city they can also make the citizens cycle more, because they won’t be concerned about the security of their bikes. And with the space reservation system they would be sure to find a free space.

So which one to choose? Well, cyclists would probably love to have both of them in the city, but in today’s economic reality cities might have to make choices and it’s up to them to decide what they need the most.  Everything depends on their local conditions. Cities may choose one system and then install the other, because they are meant to co-exist.

But one thing is sure – investing in sustainable mobility is the way to go. And it's worth it.

www.icnitaemovity.com

INNOVATION WITH THE URBAN MOBILITY

SOLUTIONS: UNDERSTANDING THE NEEDS AND DEVELOPING THE APPROPIATE TOOL. PRESENTING A SUCCES EXAMPLE.

Emerging cities of the XXI century must set sustainable criteria of growth and economic development. Cities are increasing their population, that’s why urban mobility will be decisive in the creation of environments that, in case of having set environmental criteria, will negatively impact in the health of citizens: noise, pollution, stress ... The involvement of all people and organisms is essential to contribute in drawing a new model of urban mobility, in which public transport must gain place to the individual, in benefit of a healthier environment, friendly and respectful with the urban environment.

Similarly, urban intermodality is one of the objectives of cities committed to the future must bear in mind, complemented by the introduction of educational policies towards public spirit and shared services. Next generation Mobility systems need to be endowed with intelligence, so that there is a communication of the city’s system and the citizens. They also need a centralized management, which will provide the relevant data in order that we can analyze the behavior and improve the system.

Therefore, the role of the private enterprise is key and specially the role of the technology. As a practical case, ICNITA EMOVITY shows an example of a Project implemented in 15 cities in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, which has been opened to the public few months ago, and which turned to be the biggest project in the world in terms of network of public bike parking. 

Project Background and Context:
The growing use of the private car obliges city councils to simplify and encourage citizens to use of sustainable means of transport. Among these alternatives, the most efficient is the bicycle.
The current concern of cities and their citizens is mostly theft of the private bicycle, or of some of its fittings, whenever it is parked in the street. City councils need to be able to provide citizens with a municipal network of safe bicycle parking areas with sufficient surveillance to prevent abuse such as permanent occupations of a
slot.

The City of Barcelona was a pioneer in implementing a Bike Sharing System, and after some years, cities that
that comprise the Barcelona Metropolitan Area had the aim to promote the use of the bike as well, giving to the citizens a completely safe and comfortable solution, so they could use their particular bike to move within city. They realized that their profile of citizens already had their own bike, so the city councils decided to look for a network of safe parking for the bikes, which must be really chap to maintain, especially compared to the 

Bike Sharing system, which has some associated cost as the redistribution of bikes and their maintenance.
We are definitely living in a moment where the bicycle is no longer a mean of transport for the lower classes, but is considered as a fast and sustainable mean of urban transport, and it can even become a luxury product.

Conceptualization of the system and Project Design:
There are some important aspects that anyone must consider in order to
success in launching a new solution related to the urban transport System:

Innovation & New technologies
Sustainable cities
Shared solutions
Mobility on demand
Coexisting with the urban environment
Saturated cities
Economic crisis
Intermodality
Business models
Reducing noise in the area
Reducing CO2 contamination
Going green
Real-time management
Intelligence in the system
Economic viability
Safe
Simplicity & User friendly
Guaranteed operation
Energy efficient
Adaptability & Easy installation

The Result:

The Network of safe private bicycle parking bays is a innovative solution comprised of bicycle parking  modules that fully protect it from vandalism, allowing to every person to keep his bike in an individual space. This is an alternative and complementary system to the bicycle sharing and enables users to have their own bicycle, while at the same time being a more economical solution for city councils.

The electronic control guarantees safe, sure user management. The centralised system enables operators to control the condition of all the modules from one point. It has different technologies as the RFID or the GPRS integrated. The modules are completely independent as the power is supplied by solar panels and  communication is via mobile telephone networks

www.icnitaemovity.com