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Bicycle Sharing and Stealing Programs
By spokesman | April 29, 2008
I came across two related articles yesterday discussing bicycle rental programs. The first article appeared in the New York Times and discussed a new bicycle rental program that will be established in Washington D.C. next month. It is the first of its type in the United States. A new public-private venture called SmartBike DC will make 120 bicycles available at 10 spots in the city. The automated program will operate in a similar fashion to car-sharing programs like Zipcar. Users will pay a $40 annual membership fee and can check out three-speed bicycles for three hours at a time. In the deal, Clear Channel will have exclusive advertising rights in the city’s bus shelters. The downfall of these types of programs has been stolen and damaged bicycles. The other related article that I saw yesterday was in the April 21 issue of Business Week and it discussed the problems with a similar program in Paris in the follow excerpt.
“A bicycle rental scheme launched in Paris last summer has been, uh, a runaway success. Renters didn’t return 2,000 of the 15,000 silver bikes to the self-service stands dotting the city. An additional 1,200 came back so banged up that they, too, have to be replaced, says French advertising group JCDecaux, which runs the service under a city contract. French privacy laws ban merchants from keeping credit-card and other customer data after a rental period or other transaction ends, so offenders aren’t easily nabbed. JCDecaux is seeking an exemption to the law. A spokeswoman says it factors such losses into its deal with the city, which “pays” the company in free outdoor ad space.”
The Washington D.C. program will assume that bikes gone for more than 48 hours are stolen and the last user will be charged a $200 replacement fee. While that may reduced the stolen bikes as compared to the Paris program, it will be interesting to see how the initiative works out in the long run. After all, Washington D.C. does have it fair share of criminals and is home to Congress. If successful, it could be expanded to include more bikes. Clear Channel also has a similar deal with San Francisco. Chicago and Portland, Oregon are also considering bicycle rental programs.
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Topics: Flotsam |