Better bicycle-sharing is now feasible for more cities

Imagine that in any city of the world you could always easily pick up a bike, located no further than 2 minutes away from you, make a trip and leave it wherever you want? This may become a reality in a matter of several years. A range of alternative technologies slash bike-sharing implementation costs making it a viable transportation option for more cities.

When hearing about bike-sharing most people imagine this:

Automated kiosks with slots for bicycles. Station-based bike-sharing systems in Moscow (left) and New York (right)

…they are right, but it’s not the whole truth.

Station-based bike-sharing systems pictured above appeared in the 1990-ies and are still dominant in cities around the world. The key issue — huge implementation costs of $300–700 thousands per every 100 bicycles — making it dependable on subsidies and sponsorships. Hence only a handful of cities can afford to implement such systems properly. Fortunately, new technologies emerge which allow to provide similar or even better service with much lower costs.

New bike-sharing technologies

1. Smart bikes (Mobike, Social Bicycles)

• Launch costs: $50–200 ths. / 100 bicycles
• Vendors: Social Bicycles, Mobike
• First successful launch: 2010
• Implementations: Social Bicycles in several cities in the USA, Mobike in Beijing and Schanghai

A bicycle with an incorporated lock, no automated station needed. First such system was introduced in 2009 by Social Bicycles. Changing specialized stations to standard bike racks allows to reduce costs and increase convenience — installing a bike rack is way easier, so there will be more pick-up and drop-off locations, which gives users more freedom. Also, existing infrastructure of bike-racks can be used:

Social Bicycles. No need for automated stations. Bikes can be locked to standard bike racks (left) and, optionally, to stylized bike racks dedicated to the project (right). Start and finish ride with smartphone and on the bike, kiosk on the right is for additional marketing and information only.

Very recently, in September 2016, in Beijing a new bike-sharing service Mobike was launched. In contrast to Social Bicycles the system works without bike racks. The lock only blocks the rear wheel. Scan the code to have the bike unlocked, and simply press a button on the lock when you finish the ride — the lock will close and built-in GPS-tracker will update the bike location for the next user:

Mobike. Bikes can be left anywhere in public as they are tracked via built-in GPS and are specially designed to reduce the risks of theft and vandalism. Lock, 3G module and GPS-tracker get recharged from built-in dynamo.

There are no costs and regulatory hussles of installing bike racks or automated stations. Being able to leave a bike anywhere in public without attaching it to a station gives users more freedom, which means more people will opt for the service, bringing in more revenue. Mobike seems to have made the first automated bike-sharing which can be financially sustainable without sponsors and subsidies in many cities. This can make Mobike into a first bike-sharing company, which can grow fast across the cities globally.

2. Smart locks

Several other companies are following Mobike trying to create a lower cost bike-sharing systems. Smart lock solutions don’t necessarily presume in-built GPS, but rather use the GPS of your smartphone. A bike can be unlocked with an app via Bluetooth or with a code. As user finishes the ride, the app requires her to make a picture of the locked bicycle — to make sure the bike is properly locked. The key drawback of such solution compared to smart-locks — user needs to take out a smartphone to finish the ride.

The author of this piece tested 2 smart locks and was in talks to salespeople of most other locks — all of the locks have it’s issues waiting to be solved before adapting the locks for municipal bike-sharing.

The early versions of such systems, not yet fully suitable for municipal bike-sharing. Some teams working on such solutions include AirDonkey, Bitlock, Noke and Dropbyke — there are also many others. A complete version of such system, ready for rollout in one of the cities, can be expected as soon as early 2017. Just like Mobike, such systems have potential to be financially sustainable in many cities. However, in the future ‘smart’-locks will have hard time competing with stationless GPS-enabled ‘smart’-bikes because of fundamentally better user experience and lower operator risks of the latter.

3. Bicycles in public places (Cafebike.org)

• Launch costs: $25–50 ths. / 100 bicycles
• Key vendor: Cafebike.org
• First successful launch: 2016
• Implementations: Cafebike St.Petersburg, Cafebike Kaliningrad

Cafebike.org. Bicycles are by the cafes, shops and other public places. To get a key from the employee of the place, user has to start ride via an app or SMS.

Cafebike.org is a semi-automated solution: user starts the ride in the app and gets a key from an employee at the public place — be it cafe, shop, hotel or any other — near which the bicycles are locked. Ordinary bike racks and ordinary U-locks are used which leads to decreased costs. Despite the obvious drawbacks — not all places work 24 hours and sometimes there can be a queue — such system is a good way to start if fully automated solutions are not feasible. As of now, such system was implemented in 2 cities in Russia — with 90 bicycles in St.Petersburg and with 35 bicycles in Kaliningrad. Expansions to more cities in Russia and abroad are planned for 2017.

The system like Cafebike.org suits cities which don’t have financing to launch automated system, or for those who want to test the idea of city-bicycle sharing risk-free. In case the test succeeds it’s possible to upgrade to any of the automated smart-lock systems. Due to lower implementation costs, such system can also be financially sustainable with no or limited support from sponsors in some cities.

What makes a good city bike-sharing

There are several key points to deliver if you want a bike-sharing system to be popular. Here are the key criteria of a quality bike-sharing system:

• The coverage area is large enough. On the territory of bike-sharing operation starts and ends enough trips. Depending on city properties it can be as small as 10–20 sq. km of the city center.
• Bike-sharing points are located densely. A bike is always 2–5 minutes away and it’s always possible to find a place to lock the bike near the destination.
• Ease of use. Starting and finishing rides, as well as signing up for the service, should take just a few moments.
• Safe and convenient bikes, which fit most people, are durable and resistant to vandalism. Specialized parts and uniform colors make bicycles less attractive for stealing.
• Maintaining optimal service level by choosing the right technology, organizing maintenance and bike-redistribution operations and monitoring the service level metrics — users satisfaction with bikes conditions, ability to always find or return a bike where user wants et c.
• Making it the cheapest transportation option for short rides: to make a noticeable part of people choose the service, traveling by bike-share should cost less than by bus or underground.

It’s often about compromising and choosing between alternatives: use the same budget to build semi-automated bike-sharing like Cafebike.org with 500 bikes and higher rental points density, rather than building a 50-bike automated system. But as ‘smart’-bikes technologies, like Mobike, improve and become available globally — they become an obvius technology of choice.

What to start with: bike-sharing or bike lanes?

No bicycle lanes — key, but not single factor, holding people back from using the bicycle. By elimintating all other factors bicycle can become a way more popular mode of transportation. Bike-sharing can be the simplest, cheapest and most efficient way to eliminate those other factors. When the share of trips made by bicycle reaches 1–3% — creating bicycle lanes will be a way more popular political decision.

So can a bike sharing become popular in a city where there are no bike lanes? And why would that happen? Let’s take a look at Moscow (Russia) — in 2015 and 2016 it was just as inconvenient to ride a bicycle in the city, the scale of Velobike bike-sharing didn’t change, but the popularity of bike sharing service increased — from 800 ths. to 1.5 mln. rides, while no road incidents involving city bicycles were registered. Current number of users with annual membership — 20 000 — 10 times less than in London or New-York. Outstanding figures, considering, that in New-York and London the coverage area is higher as is the stations density, bike-sharing works all the year round and a network of bike lanes is better developed.

At the same time, just by building bike-lanes and not creating bike-sharing, it may be difficult to increase number of bikes in the streets of your city due to the following reasons:

• Houses and courtyards are not fit for storing bicycles. Not all houses have a place to store bike on the first floor, not everyone is ready to leave his bike in the courtyard for the night and it’s a burden to bring it daily upstairs and downstairs and sote it in your flat.
• Bicycles good for daily usage in city are not popular. Simple and cheap city models are not popular in some cities. If bicycles are traditionally mostly used in your city for sport and recreation — they are usually the ones which cost more and people wouldn’t leave them in the streets that easily.
• Durable bike-locks are not popular. Few people know that the simplest U-lock reduces the probability of your bike being stolen nearly to zero. Most people use cable-locks and weak chains — which can be broken too easily. Few shops sell U-locks and the sales assistants are not trained to inform customers on potential risks of weak locks.
• Too few bike racks in the city streets. It’s so easy to lock a bike to a fence — it is reliable and you can find such parking spot everywhere in the city. The problem is — not everyone is ready to do it. First, it’s counter-intuitive; second, in some people’s opinion, such parking violates the social order. Hence, if there is no bike-rack within 50 meters of most destinations — public places or transit hubs — city is not yet convenient for cycling.

And for some people the benefits of using the bike-sharing bikes instead of the own bike make all the difference:

• make one-way rides and combine bike with other modes of transportation — flexibility of planning your day and moving around;
• no need to maintain the bike and worry about it not being stolen;
• no need to store the bike in the flat, take it up and down the staircase.

If you are working on increasing cycling in your community, it’s reasonable to start with the simplest project, which will face the least objections, while reaping the most benefits. Due to emergence of low-cost technologies for bike-sharing, it’s now just such a project — can be implemented in partnership with business and is way cheaper and easier than building other key elements of cycling infrastructure. In the case of Cafebike.org system — it doesn’t require investments in specialized equipment, can be launched in your community today and leaves the room for upgrading to smart-lock technology in the future using the same bikes, same bike-racks and same loyal user base.

Think of launching a bike-sharing in your community? Don’t hesitate to write to stanislav@cafebike.org to get advice.

This article was first distributed via our Newsletter — subscribe to be first to get our reports on the future of smart-bike and smart-lock bike sharing systems.