Insidious Chicago Bike-Share Station Threatens Home and Hearth!

Read More: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/com...d-hearth/6648/




http://cdn.theatlanticcities.com/img..._z/largest.jpg

The American Bike-Share Fleet Has Doubled Since January

Read More: http://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/08/30...since-january/

http://dc.streetsblog.org/wp-content...ts40_fleet.png




Rubbee Drive

Website: http://www.rubbee.co.uk/

http://www.rubbee.co.uk/sites/defaul...er/banner1.jpg

Chicago's Divvy Bikes hit the 2 month mark on August 28th; here are the stats:

Over 230,000 trips taken

Over 6,200 Annual Members

Over 55,700 24 hour passes sold

Over 680,000 Miles Traveled

200 stations now active; 100 more planned to be launched very soon. Its been a epic hit, way beyond initial expectations.

Has it? Beyond whose expectations? I think it's been successful, but it's certainly not beyond my expectations, and it has 90% few annual members than New York's program. I don't think overblowing the actually level of success will help it.

It is kind of weird - I love Divvy and use it very nearly every day, but it's also motivated me to use my own bikes a lot more. And in fact I just bought a fourth bike today, one that comes close to being the perfect bike for me, one I could use to commute with. I'm also a fickle Divvy rider. They initially put a station across the street from my house and I used it to commute every day. Then last week they moved it a block away and I only used it once for commuting since then, instead using my own bikes or, once, driving to work.

CDOT mentioned that the usage rates after initial roll out have been far heavier than expected. They were quoted as such in a article (tribune or suntimes, can't remember which) published about 5 weeks after first launch on June 28th. We aren't comparable to Citibikes, yet. Citibikes is far larger in scope than Divvy will be for at least the 1st year. Further, Manhattan's overall density, transit usage and pedestrian activity are on a different level entirely when compared to a similar geographic area in Chicago; it was only natural for Citibikes to take off in the nature that it did.

If you want to put a damper on pretty much anything that involves 'urbanism' going on in Chicago, go ahead and compare to NYC's stats. But I for one really don't see the point in doing that.

Yeah, Chicago isn't Manhattan. I'd like to see how Divvy's performance compares to Bixi in Montreal or Toronto. Those are probably the closest comparisons to Chicago, in terms of urban form, wealth levels, and bike share ambitions.

Capital Bikeshare might also be a good comparison.

^ Well, to be honest, I'd go as far as saying I don't see any point in comparing at all.

A dense, urban city with a large population of people who walk and use transit (whether or not they own cars) is inevitably going to have a successful bike share program.

Sure you can go tit for tat over some of the stats between cities, but I would argue that in the proper setting, a bike share system is very much "If you build it, they will come"

Making Boston top in cycling commutes

NICOLE FREEDMAN’S words were as grand as the map draft on her City Hall desk. The map shows the city rimmed and crisscrossed 30 years from now by 364 miles of bike lanes, tripling its current 120-mile network.

Freedman is the director of Mayor Menino’s Boston Bikes program. The bicycle trail network is the centerpiece of a plan to make cycling so central to transportation that biking would account for 30 to 50 percent of all trips in Boston by 2043. These would range from commuters cycling in from bordering suburbs to local residents rushing out for a carton of milk.

That would bring Boston, currently at around 2 percent of all trips by bike, to European levels of cycling. No other major US city has a goal that high.

Read More: http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2...xAO/story.html

If I read the stats right, over the last two months Chicago has averaged a little under 4,000 bikeshare trips per day (I wonder if the weekday usage is higher and weekends lower?). How many bikes does Divvy have? There's a lot of conflicting information out there.

Citibike in NYC has 6,000 bikes--within the American context, that system is on a scale of its own.

Montreal's Bixi has 50k members and 20k - 25k trips per day, with peaks around 30k. 5000 bikes are spread over 550 docking stations.

Divvy will eventually have 400 stations and 4000 bikes next year. The initial launch was on June 28th with 75 stations. 100 stations were active by late July, 150 by mid august and 200 right now. Another 100 stations should be on-line by the end of September. So, the stats would have been generated using an average of say 1000-1500 bikes in service over the 2 month period, as the system is only just now at the half way point for full implementation.

There have been discussions of expanding Divvy into Evanston and Oak Park as well; doing so would require an expansion of the network within the north and west sides of Chicago as well.

Electric-bicycle-sharing pilot program to launch in Berkeley, San Francisco in 2014

Read More: http://www.dailycal.org/2013/08/25/e...cisco-in-2014/

http://www.planetizen.com/files/styl...?itok=nUlIcJaI




Park by Swarm

Read More: http://dirt.asla.org/2013/08/28/park-by-swarm/

http://aslathedirt.files.wordpress.c.../08/cycle1.jpg




http://aslathedirt.files.wordpress.c.../08/cycle2.jpg




http://aslathedirt.files.wordpress.c.../08/cycle4.jpg




http://aslathedirt.files.wordpress.c...cle9.jpg?w=500

^ The problem I see with those Parkcycles is they are almost entirely a leisure bike. Big and wide and they appear slow moving.

It's important to ask what is public ROW for? Is it for conveyance of commuters and freight with consideration for reasonable leisure ride?

I mention this because any congested city I've biked in, the accommodation for bicycles and use by cyclists is somewhat rushed from Point A to Point B. Now to the point where I'm seeing passing lanes, and wider lanes.

It's fun and novel, but our streets have become scarier and more congested and cities have done their best to separate and accommodate modes. Bicyclists want faster commutes, drivers want lanes free of cyclists. Pedestrians want neither.... So now we throw in these novelty bikes that move and slow speeds and require some additional width clearance. I realize it's just a concept, but the more of these nutty designs make it to our streets, the more it challenges well planned motorized and non-motorized infrastructure to adapt in ways that some cities may not be able to do. I'm thrilled by new ideas, but I'm seeing specialized lanes so blatantly misused.

More suited to places like Europe then, unless they close streets for a while and have this set up take place from time to time.

Not necessarily, but it would be good if they did. Expanding in Rogers Park would be logical and straightforward. Expanding through West Garfield Park and/or North Lawndale would likely be problematic, though.

Step 1) Don't shut down your bike-share program for 5 months of the year.

What I was taking exception to were the terms "epic hit" and "beyond all expectations," neither of which I think are accurate.

My comparison with New York wasn't to say we SHOULD be comparable to New York, but rather to say that in order to qualify as "epic" or "beyond all expectations" we'd at least have to be more in that direction.

As I said, Divvy is a success. I'm sure it will continue to grow in popularity. I was a member from Day 1 (member key number 195), am an ardent fan, have exchanged emails with the head of marketing there, and even found the "Divvy Red" and won a promotional prize for a photo of me on it. But the level of usage success it has attained is, in my opinion, about what I expected. The level of members is actually below what I would have expected, and I think that has to do with how well it's been pitched to locals, and a little confusion over pricing. Eventually that should get sorted out, but overblowing it's level of success doesn't help anything, which is why I objected to it.

This is another case in which I read about something (usually something odd, pointless and/or stupid) via Mark on this forum that nobody on the ground in San Francisco even knows about. I actively follow San Francisco issues like the bike culture, infrastructure, transportation issues, complete streets stuff (like parklets, which Rebar has designed here), and I know nothing of this "human-powered open space distribution system designed for agile movement within the existing auto-centric urban infrastructure" except the excerpt above. Seriously--those photos are not even from San Francisco.

My main problem with this is that it relies on a really simplistic understanding of cities. Green=good, paved=bad. There are reasons why a lawn might be better than a sidewalk (permeability, carbon capture, etc) but putting astroturf over a sidewalk doesn't remotely solve the problem.

This also completely ignores the potential of paved areas to provide space for people within cities. Paving can be just as beautiful as grass, with a far greater durability and flexibility to host various kinds of program like festivals or markets as well as everyday socialization.

There have been a lot of these projects in the last few years - at first they were provocative, but now they're just a distraction from the very real and substantial issues that we have in cities regarding the allocation of public space.