St. Louis Bike Share Rollout Monday April 16th 9am Kiener Plaza with Mayor Krewson, John Nations
Join St. Louis City officials for the long-awaited rollout of bike share in St. Louis City.
St. Louis Bike Share Rollout
Monday, April 16th, 2018, 9:00, Keiner Plaza
Speakers: Mayor Krewson, John Nations, OFO, LimeBike
This spring, 1,500 bicycles could roll out across St. Louis, spotting the streets with yellow and green.
Two companies have applied for permits be part of the “dockless” bike share program that city officials say will close gaps in public transportation routes, bring affordable transportation to low-income neighborhoods and give tourists a fun way to get around the city.
St. Louis would be one of more than 50 U.S. cities to establish bike share systems since 2010, according to the National Association of City Transportation.
In some parts of the country, such as the Minneapolis-St. Paul region and New York City, riders can pick up bikes from racks throughout their community. Dockless bike shares are less common, but have gained popularity in the past two years. The systems let riders leave the bikes anywhere that’s safe instead of requiring them to return to a dock.
“This is a no-cost program to the city,” said Deanna Venker, commissioner of traffic for St. Louis.
Pluses seem to outweight minuses of dockless bike share systems
Washington, DC, is currently experimenting with dockless bike share during a trial period. The city has numerous dockless bike share companies all rolling out their fleets simultaneously. And that is in addition to DC's existing well developed and well used docked bike share system.
At the recent National Bike Summit we had the opportunity to use the dockless bikes on many occasions. They were an impressive and very well-used addition to DC's bicycle scene.
Advantages of dockless bike share:
- Many, many more bicycles available in many more locations across the service area. 100% of the time a dockless bike share bike was available closer than the nearest bike share dock.
- As a result, it was common to come across a dockless bike on any walking trip--making easy to grab that bike and just continue the journey. By contrast, finding the nearest docked bike share is almost always a block or two out of the way, even in a city like DC with a very high number of bike share stations.
- At the destination, you can just park the dockless bike anywhere you would park your regular bike. This is a big advantage over the docked systems--where the dock is usually a block or two away from your destination at best.
- Renting from the dockless systems is generally easy if you have a mobile phone.
- Finding a dockless bike is always easy using your mobile phone.
- U.S. city's experience with dockless systems shows that they are reaching important new demographics that the docked systems have had difficulty reaching: Young people, people of color, people at lower income levels. These are groups than can benefit the most from the mobility offered by bicycling.
- Cost for the dockless systems is much lower per bike and for the system as a whole. What this means is that dockless bike share companies are more able to cover a larger service area with a high enough density of bikes to really make them available and usable.
- Concerns that dockless bikes would block sidewalks and otherwise cause problems seem mostly to be a non-problem. People parking the dockless bikes in a way that blocks sidewalks or causes access problems for disabled or wheelchair users is certain a potential problem, just as it is with any type of bicycle parking. But the problem was little in evidence around the city, and both the city and bike share companies seemed to feel they can develop procedures and systems for minimizing this problem.
- The bike rental is very affordable--usually just $1/ride. Many systems offer a free introductory ride. As a rule that means the cost less than transit, less than driving, and less than docked bike share. Generally speaking the barriers to using the system, including initial cost, are noticeably lower than using either docked bike share or owning your own bicycle.
- No more worries about locking your bike or bike theft! Dockless bike share bikes lock to themselves and because they are so easily available at such a low cost there is little incentive to steal them. In the area of DC the dockless systems serviced, you could depend on finding a dockless bike within a block or two of wherever you were. Meaning that you could depend on the dockless system for your routine transportation and leave your expensive theft-prone bike safely locked at home.
Possible disadvantages:
- Dockless bicycles can clutter or block sidewalks and other access points.
- It is unclear how sustainable the dockless bike share business model is. Are these systems still going to be here in 5, 10, 20, 30 years?
- For areas that already have docked bike share system, there is some danger that the dockless systems will roll into town, undercut docked systems with lower prices and greater ease of use, drive the docked systems out of business, and then go bankrupt or withdraw service areas themselves.
- Similar to other tech-oriented businesses, many of the companies have initial financing and an initial goal of achieving scale by garnering market share. If you have watched the tech sector for the past 25 years you know this approach has yielded some remarkable successes but also some notable failures. There are two danger points to keep in mind:
- The entire sector could face a cash crisis and fail, leaving us with fewer bicycle rental and bike share options than we started with.
- The sector could trend towards a single company monopolistically dominating the entire landscape rather than the current healthy competetive landscape.
Overall dockless bike share is a very interesting concept--potentially game changing. Small towns & suburbs could potentially have dockless bike share fleets. Smaller metro areas that can't quite make docked bike share work from a business standpoint may be able to make a go of dockless bike share.
Some potential downsides bear watching, but overall the dockless bike share systems show some really strong potential.
And it's great to see bike share finally coming to St. Louis--one of the last major midwestern cities that still does not have a bike share system.
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