Biggest Bike Share in the world

Submitted by idontspam on 3 June 2011 - 3:02pm

Anyone who claims that bike-sharing is a European-style transportation innovation has clearly never set foot in Hangzhou, China. The 50,000-bike system in this southern China city of almost 7 million people (about 1.5 million people fewer than New York City) blows all other bike-shares off the map. As Bradley Schroeder of theInstitute for Transportation and Development Policy said, "I don't think there is anywhere you can stand in Hangzhou for more than a minute or two where you wouldn't have a Hangzhou Public Bike go past you."

Hangzhou's 2,050 bike-share stations are spaced less than a thousand feet from each other in the city center, and on an average day riders make 240,000 trips using the system. Its popularity and success have set a new standard for bike-sharing in Asia. And the city is far from finished. The Hangzhou Bicycle Company plans to expand the bike-share system to 175,000 bikes by 2020!

Source

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Intermodal Bicycle Connectivity

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China showing the way

Submitted by idontspam on 3 June 2011 - 3:14pm.

China showing the way, I wasnt surprised at all. They are doers. Atleast in NMT some baby steps are being taken here in Bengaluru hope it doesnt get stuck with the non-doers abound

level of "sharing"

Submitted by silkboard on 5 June 2011 - 4:30pm.

Key numbers from the report

"2,050 bike-share stations"
"240,000" daily trips
"50,000-bike system"

So 5 trips on each cycle per day on average. 25 cycles at each bike-share-station. ~ 120 transactions at each bike-share station per day. All reasonable numbers.

Yay! CBD gets bike

Submitted by idontspam on 24 June 2011 - 8:22am.

Yay! CBD gets bike sharing

Alight from Metro, hop on to bicycle

Automated bicycle sharing system in Bangalore

Submitted by Haseeb Arfath on 28 June 2011 - 1:20pm.

Hi Guys! I am a new entrant in here...to start of i am the co-founder-CMD of Kerberon Automations Pvt Ltd (http://www.kerberonautomations.com/) the company that is setting up the centralized bicycle sharing platform in the CBD area of our city. Got a call yesterday from Srinidhi (the admin/team lead of praja) asking me to get involved with this community...going through it I ve to thank him for introducing me to his very informative online community portal!....I would like all the members in here to let me know of any suggestions they would like to see in this system that would be set up by july 30th and i promise we will consider them! To let you know more about our plans here's the TOI article

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-06-24/bangalore/29698917_1_public-bicycle-stations-space

Now the updates since then!

Closed a deal with a French bicycle company called Btwin (i am sure the cyclists here know about this very cool bicycle company) to supply unique custom made bicycles for ATCAG( tats what the platform would be called) and already the first lot is shipped from their manufacturing facility.
Finalizing the locations with property owners...almost done there....
Work is in full swing at our docking station manufacturing facility....
Started an interaction with namma bengalurians by registering with praja.in :P
In talks with different ministries/departments of both central and state governments to take this to much much greater level and not just CBD and Bangalore to benefit the end users!

About the system:

Still unclear about the fares!! (the poll up in praja must help!! :) )
First 45 minutes of use will be free.
The user needs to furnish Residential address proof, identity proof to get his smart card.
Totally automated! ...like in any other European city but completely different in design that lets us get the system up and running within a few hours!

I request you to please put in those suggestions/wishes and queries and I promise to actively take forward the conversations :)

Haseeb, So how many stations

Submitted by idontspam on 28 June 2011 - 9:23pm.

Haseeb, So how many stations are you planning to have? does the pickup & drop have to be at the same station? How do you balance the bike availability if not?

Few points to consider

Submitted by r2mys on 29 June 2011 - 12:48pm.

Haseeb, It is very nice to see progress from your team on bike rental program. I would like to add few additional points to be considered while designing this system.

o Bike rental at CBD and return at another location within Bangalore : Can this be supported? I understand that CBD will be the only area where rentals are available to begin with, but some commuters may want to bike to nearby places such as Indiranagar, CMH road etc and drop their bike.

o Bike rental for more than a day : Can a user rent a bike and keep for more than 24 hrs ? I believe you should collect a security deposit to ensure safety of bikes.

o Offer basic types of bikes for the program : Initial commuters could be IT and business folks, but once this gears momentum, this system should offer rental at much lower cost. To accommodate this, basic bikes needs to be added to the inventory, so that the cost for renting such bikes is lesser than geared bikes.

o Introduce monthly/yearly rental options: Please include rental options based on yearly plan, so that there is more incentives for regular bikers. Capital bikeshare in DC offer yearly plan for $75.

o Rental renewal through SMS. This feature is a must, considering that one many not be aware of the balance amount in his/her account at the time of renting, and need a quick and easy way to recharge.

o Bike security : Ensure that there are one or 2 security personnel at each station. Even though the system operates without any such support in other countries, it is important here in India.

o Validate bike condition upon return : Personnel needs to validate condition of the bike upon return. If the bike is damaged, then the only partial amount of security deposit will be refunded.

o Have a carrier ( in the front : Refer bike design in capital bikeshare) in all rental bikes. This will help commuters carry any bags, and laptops etc, while they use bikes.

o Option to rent(or buy) bike helmet and purchase basic air filter(similat to totobobo filter?) for nominal cost at prominent stations. You cannot expect people to bring helmet along with them always, and riding without helmet in CBD is definitely not safe.

o Define operating times for bike rental program. My suggestion is 6:30 AM to 9:30 PM.

Last, but not the least: There needs to be a detailed "use case" document (if it is not already prepared) for this project. This document will also help in creating milestones and a roadmap for this service.

answers!!

Submitted by Haseeb Arfath on 29 June 2011 - 4:17pm.

Hi guys thanks for your interest in this!

@idontspam:

the docking stations are centrally connected hence you can take a bike from any docking station and return it any other...
We are planning 6 as indicated in the newspaper
Bike availability will be monitored and taken care of.

@r2mys:

Point 1 of above reply takes care of your question, yeah as indicated in the article we will expand rapidly :)
As of now we cannot support bike rentals for more than a day because to start off there will be limited bikes so other users will face problems of unavailability of bikes.
We want to encourage our users to use bicycles, even though we are using imported bicycles we wont burn hole in their pockets.
I will make a note of this .
All other points have been taken care of :)

Thanks guys!

Bangalore gets bike share

Submitted by idontspam on 19 October 2011 - 8:09am.

So Haseeb's bike share rolled out in a lowkey event yesterday, read here. Now if the lanes caught up we would have some safety coverage for the bikers as well.

“The traffic is so horrible and unsafe for cyclists. People don’t even bother about the cyclists on the roads. At times, they drive so fast that they nearly run over us. In such situations, how can one travel all the way and use these facilities?” Source

500 Rs cud be a deterrent!

Submitted by srinidhi on 19 October 2011 - 8:54am.

Registration fee of 500 could turn out to be a deterrent considering there are only 3 stations at this point..but still a good start..wish them luck with this..

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JQkcvMjAxMS8xMC8xOSNBcjAwNjAy

We needed a Bicycle Station @ Basavaeshwara Circle

Submitted by Vasanth on 19 October 2011 - 1:30pm.

Southern Blore is well connected to Corporation / Basaveshwara Circle. Reaching NM Station @MG Road will be a problem if we get down at Corporation Circle. We have to take a bus opposite to Kanteerava Stadium towards Ulsoor and get down at Trinity Station.

If there is a Bicycle Dock Station at Corporation Circle, it would attract more people. Bicycle lanes can be easily done on Kasturbha Road until Vittal Mallya Circle since Road is wide, same is the case on MG Road. We had lanes earlier. Problem lies between Vittal Mallya Road and Cricket Stadium.

Awesome

Submitted by ashwin on 21 October 2011 - 7:21pm.

This is fantastic. Wishing the Kerberon team all the very best and I sincerely hope you succeed.

I am actually very surprised that something like this has come up in Bangalore now - I thought we were a good 10 years away from the point where we would be able to replicate the velib (Paris bike-share) model. I actually worry that you may be early.

I have one big concern and that is scale. Velib was launched with a massive 750 docking stations. London launched the so called Boris bikes with a smaller but still impressive number of 315 stations. The smallest I saw was Washington DC launched with 49 stations (all numbers sourced from wikipedia). Ofcourse most of these had significant government backing and large corporate tie-ups - JC Decaux for Paris and Barclays for London .

Scale is important at the get go to get a critical mass of people to use the system. Otherwise it will remain a novelty. I don't know what your plans are, post the pilot period, but I hope you can raise the money to put atleast 30 stations in the CBD area. If it means going to Sudha Murthy or Rohini Nilekani to fund you for the first year, do it.

Btw, the article mentions 6 docking stations in the pilot, but I can find only three explicity mentioned by name on the site - Kumble Circle, Shankarnag & War Memorial (I actually passed by the latter two yesterday and today). Where are the remaining three? Are they yet to be set up ?

The why's & the wherefore's

Submitted by idontspam on 22 October 2011 - 11:10am.

The history of the cycling movement in Netherlands (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o)

Lanes first.... study

Submitted by idontspam on 18 May 2012 - 8:07pm.

A new study of 90 of the 100 largest cities in the U.S. helps answer the question of what makes a city bicycle-friendly—and it turns out that the most important factor affecting the number of cyclists is the prevalence of bike paths.

With this research in hand, the prescription for cities is clear: Want bikes? Build lanes

It seems like the attempt of

Submitted by rs on 19 May 2012 - 1:59am.

It seems like the attempt of introducing public bikes in Bangalore hasnt been too successful. But its clear why - for it to work it has to be done one a large scale - you cannot just have 2 or 3 stands within a km of each other. Also, of course you need bike lanes. What I am concerned is that autorities will leverage its failiure to throw the baby out with the bathwater as they did with other things like the HOHO service.

For any such thing to work one needs infrastructure to be in place as well as good advertising. And as Ids says - if you build it people will use it.

Ramesh

more kiosks needed?

Submitted by srinidhi on 30 October 2012 - 1:19pm.

The ambitious ‘rent a cycle’ facility that was launched as part of the first anniversary of Namma Metro operations on the 6.7-km long Reach -1 — Baiyappanahalli to MG Road — will finally take off on Tuesday.

more here

A wellcome move indeed. However limiting rental station to metro stations only is a constraint. There are many people, including the ones interviewed in the newspaper article, who will want to use the cycles to get to their work places and return them off there, closer to their work place.

More drop off locations need to be identified because keeping the cycles unused/locked for most part of the day at work places as Arfath suggests..even though its subsidised..is really waste of resources

Even if there are no bike

Submitted by abidpqa on 30 October 2012 - 11:17pm.

Even if there are no bike lanes, this should work in Indiranagar which has lots of small roads so people can avoid CMH road and 100 feet road, but there are not many offices there. But MG road surely needs bike lanes because there are less smaller roads especially to go towads Commercial street. In fact, rental stations near BMTC stops will be good. Even, they are too far from each other.

Paris Bike share link.

MG road will get its track..

Submitted by srinidhi on 31 October 2012 - 11:44am.

Not just a lane but a dedicated track will be put on MG road/ST marks/residency/richmond road as part of the Tendersure projects..

These are now at the tendering stage..thats what Mr Kabade mentioned day before ..check the renders in the pictures section in the below link:

http://www.janaagraha.org/q2report2012-13/tendersure.html