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: