Category: Bike Share

Following on from my previous post – another reason I was particularly pleased to be in Vienna for State of the Map EU, was that Vienna has a bike share system! CityBikes has been around since 2003, it is run by JC Decaux, a commercial operator, but the scheme’s running data is controlled by the city authorities, hence I’m able to include on my Bike Share Map. Obviously I had to have a go, particularly as the scheme is open to tourists with a credit card, and is only 1 euro for as many journeys as you need over 24 hours ever – as long as each journey is less than an hour.

Vienna’s scheme is quite a bit smaller than London’s – it’s spread over a similarly sized area, but the density of stations is much lower (around 20% of London’s), so some advance planning is needed – you don’t generally just come across a stand. Redistribution also seems to be less frequent – for example my local stand remained nearly empty through for the course of the entire trip. Nonetheless I was able to make all three planned trips on the CityBikes, a 100% success rate which London’s disconnected docks and failing keys can’t match.

On the Thursday evening that we arrived, Steve and I borrowed a couple of bikes from a stand right outside the U-Bahn station on the Nachtmarkt and used them to get to the pre-conference drinks which were a couple of miles away to the north. Sign-up took ages – requiring numerous button presses and a password to be entered three times. The paper map in the stand dispenser proved to be quite handy though. We eventually got onto the fantastic, dedicated cycleways which are sensibly built on the pavements rather than the roads in Vienna, and clearly and regularly marked with blue and white cycle roundels on the ground, where errant pedestrians are more likely to look. Vienna’s streets are generally wider than London’s, allowing for such facilities – plus the narrower ones are generally one-way for cars and two-way for bikes. We accidentally headed straight into the old town rather than along the outer ring-road, but then joined the inner ring-road and had a spectacular cycle past the Museum Quarter, Parliament and City Hall. Another missed turn meant we ended up cycling three sides of a square, but we made it eventually and docked with no problems. Our return was similarly indirect – the first stand was empty, then after getting the bikes, we took an unscheduled right turn and discovered that Vienna does in fact have hills. Steve’s bike also proved to be less than road worthy, with the chain slipping and the back wheel wobbling and threatening to come off…

It turns out that there are two generations of bikes currently in use in the system. The newer ones are noticeable in that they have three gears rather than none – geared higher than London’s scheme, allowing some decent speed to be gained. They also have more comfortable handlebars, rotary bells, differently profiled rear lights and strobe front lights. The frame is also slightly different, with a lower support to the back wheel. The gears alone mean there is a considerable advantage in getting one of the new ones. In the photo at the top, the bike on the left and the furthest one on the right are the new generation bikes, while the other four are older. There are also at least four liveries on the bikes across both generations – grey/red, blue, yellow and purple.

The bikes feel heavier than London’s (if that were possible!) and because of the low dip in the middle of the frame, they tend to want to fall over a lot when you stop to look at a map and stand up. Thankfully this is OK as, in Vienna, you are generally on the cycle paths on the pavements, and not the roads themselves.

“Hot docking” – cycling straight into the dock point (a favourite of London commuters) – is just about possible, but more difficult to do than London’s – you need to approach from the left side and line up confidently. Nevertheless we had a go.

Our final trip was more ambitious – four of us OSMers headed right through the old city, past the cathedral, and eventually into the more commercial part of the city, then underneath the huge Praterstern station and right up to the Danube. Here, there is a dedicated cycle track underneath the road bridge. The bridge is however quite a way beyond the area of docking stations, so the other cyclists around were on more serious bikes.

It took us quite a way to get out here – over an hour, but that only resulted in an extra 1 euro charge. On the way back, it started raining as we passed under Praterstern, luckily this was as we passed a large dock, so we finished our return on the U-Bahn.

The website for Boston’s Hubway bike share launched today. No map of docking stations yet, but it is coming… [Update – map is here and the scheme launches on 26 July.]

The bike share is due to launch at the end of the month and will seem quite familiar to anyone visiting from London (or Toronto or Washington DC) – it’s being run by the same company that designed the system used over here – Alta Bike Share, aka BIXI. Like London, the bikes will have three gears and flashing indicator lights. Pricing is $5 a day (or $60 a year) and then free for each journey under 30 minutes. Only the annual option has a key, daily users need to always use credit cards and print out access codes. The pricing increment for long journeys (over 90 minutes) increases very aggressively, so you really don’t want to do what a lot of Londoners do at the weekend, that is take the bike to your local park for a long picnic and keep it with you for the duration.

The helmet policy is interesting – unlike London where there was no mention of using/not using helmets, here in Boston they are saying that helmets should be worn, even if local laws don’t make it mandatory. Presumably this is to disclaim liability, line up with current local politics, or sponsor requirements.

Talking of sponsors, Boston’s Hubway is one of the few schemes to have a major “title” sponsor, in this case New Balance. There are immediate and obvious synergies with New Balance, a sportswear manufacturer, sponsoring a mode of transport that many see as a leisure activity as well as a utility or commuting tool. Certainly more obvious than Barclays, a bank, that is the title sponsor here in London.

Might we have a Nike scheme in a city soon? Is the Adidas Oxford Bike Share around the corner? You heard it here first! (I have no knowledge of any forthcoming bike shares in other UK cities, apart from the current Bath trial, but Oxford’s strange shape would be eminently suited to bike share if only everybody didn’t already have a bike.)

Spotted by Prof Michael Batty, our director here at CASA, while in Bath at the weekend:

There is very little information on the scheme, on the Internet. As far as I can tell, it was announced as far back as 2008, the scheme is powered by Bicincitta (“Bike in City”) who run numerous small Italian schemes, and there is another (local) operator who is also trialling an automated electric bike scheme at the same time – probably useful considering Bath’s steep hills. The scheme appears to be a prototype and is funded by an EU project called Civitas. Local politics may have got in the way of the scheme’s rollout.

I don’t know whether the scheme has been and gone, whether it’s about to launch or whether it’s in operation now – although Mike didn’t spot any Bicincitta bikes, or indeed any other docking stations, while walking around the centre of the city. This page states that the scheme will start in “Spring 2011” with four stands and 35 bikes.

As far as I can tell there is no website for the scheme, let alone an online map showing where the bikes are. Bicincitta do have a website showing online maps for all their Italian schemes.

Bath’s got some more interesting cycling developments underway – the Two Tunnels project is progressing – eventually two long ex-rail tunnels will be opened for cycling, one of them over a mile long. This latter project at least will be a reason for me to visit Bath if it does open next year – on my own bike.

I was pleased to be invited to Brussels last week to pick up a prize for my Bike Share Map. It won the visualisation stream of the Open Data Challenge, which was organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation.

The presentation took place as part of the European Commission’s Digital Agenda Assembly event, and I was presented with a certificate by EC Vice President Neelie Kroes. You can briefly see me bumbling around the huge stage here (at around 2:40). What the video doesn’t show is the four prizewinners in each category had a minute each to say a few words about their project. It was somewhat unnerving giving unscripted remarks to an audience of over 1000 people plus a live web-stream, and having those remarks simultaneously translated into French and German, signed by an on-stage interpreter, and subtitled on the huge screens. (Photo: OKFN)

I also attended the Open Data workshop which took place before the plenary and prize-giving. There were a number of short, interesting talks here – including a presentation from Rennes in France – who have a very well developed API for accessing their public transport data including Bike Share, and an introduction to the Open Cities project. You can download both presentations from the link above.

I took the opportunity, the following morning, to use a Villo bike share bike, to head from my hotel back to the Eurostar at Brussels Midi station. The route looked straightforward on the map – basically down a long, straight street with a dedicated, paved cycle path on the pavement, and then a bit of weaving through the centre of town. What I didn’t anticipate was the large roundabout right by my starting station. I did just about manage it, and think I completed the 5km journey in just less than the half-hour free time. Having seven gears (rather than three in London) was useful for building up a decent speed, and the front basket was useful for carrying my coat and luggage. The process was pretty painless – I just used my credit card – and the big docking station at the end was very visible and had a couple of free spaces. In short – the scheme worked well and I was pleased to be able to do part of my journey back using bike share.

So, pleased to have had the Bike Share Map recognised in this way – even Boris heard about it! I’m planning on adding some more cities soon – European and otherwise – to the 30+ already on the map. While not all the feeds I’m using are probably genuinely “open”, things are hopefully starting to move in that direction. In time, hopefully all cities will come to recognise the value of including bike share and other public transport data as part of their open data platforms.

Today, Europe’s latest bike share scheme, Antwerp’s A-Velo launches. With roughly 80 stations and 1000 bikes, it’s quite an impressive scheme. It follows Ljubljana’s own launch last month.

Sadly it won’t appearing on my Bike Share Map anytime soon. It appears the scheme operator may have, possibly deliberately, slowed down the speed of access to the data on how empty or full each cycle dock is – making life difficult for mobile apps which would help users quickly find their nearest bikes, or free docking points. For bike shares to be a success, such apps are crucial – without them, it can be a bit of a lottery finding stands at certain times of the day. It also makes it difficult for me to access the same data, for my at-a-glance map.

You’ll notice, if you click on a stand on the Google Map of the scheme, there is a characteristic delay, of either 7.5 or 12.5 seconds, while the popup says “opladen…” – before the numbers appear.

You can see the delay visually by looking at the data coming in with your web browser’s developer tools (built into Chrome/Safari, or use Firebug in Firefox.) mHere’s what it looks like for Antwerp, as I clicked on a number of the docking stations on the map in turn:

The times it took to receive the data files – 7.5 or 12.5 seconds – are too similar for it to be due to the server being overloaded, or random delays through the web. It does looks like there may have been a decision to delay the service – perhaps with the best of intentions of ensuring a single client can’t overwhelm the server. Still, it’s a pity.

Spain announced its forthcoming Open Data Store today – but when raolbaletco enquired to the regional government about opening the data for the Valencia bike share scheme, the response was just “ask [scheme operator]”. A similar response was forthcoming for Paris’s bike share scheme – even though there is an Open Data Store for the city, and the bike share data would surely be a find candidate for inclusion in the store. And Ljubljana’s bike share scheme’s website has draconian terms and conditions associated with it which sound far too scary for me to use.

If I were to speculate for a moment, it would appear that some operators may be realising there is potentially a commercial value in the data – maybe in controlling that data, they can ensure it is only viewed within the context of an official app, be it chargeable, served with ads, or available as an exclusive value-added benefit to annual members. There’s nothing wrong with this – after all, like most public transport, its very difficult for bike share schemes to be commercially viable on their own – if you don’t quantify the social, environmental and touristic benefit they bring to a city. Any extra potential revenue is important. But it’s a shame – my map could have been so much more interesting.

North America seems to have the right idea – the data is free and easy to access for almost all the schemes across the US and Canada. In Washington DC they even publish the bike breakdown rates and reasons. And there is one good piece of news from Europe. London has, earlier this week, released the official feed – and API documentation for their own, hugely popular, bike share – Barclays Cycle Hire. It appears both on the transport authority’s website and in the city’s open data catalogue. While it is not perfect – you still need to sign up to see the data, and I’m still waiting on my approval – it is encouraging that my home city is, unlike most places on the continent, going in the right direction.

One of the striking aspects of the US bike share schemes thus far is that they have generally been dominated by weekend use. There has been some weekday use but not a large commuter morning/evening surge, like has been seen consistently in London. However Washington DC at least seems to have reached a turning point, with the characteristic commuter spikes starting to appear, and a post-pm-peak distribution of bikes that had a distinctly London-esque blue in the middle (few bikes in the centre of Washington DC) and red on the outside (presumably more residential areas).

As Washington DC is joining London’s characteristic commuter “tidal flow”, London itself seems to be moving away from that. “Casual” use combined with unseasonably hot and sunny weather here, has meant a “tourist” afternoon surge, always seen at weekends, is present on weekdays now too. This somewhat dilutes the evening commuter use, although the system still ends up quite unbalanced at the end of the day.

I’ve made a minor adjustment to my bike share map statistics (see the “graph” link) – namely the one on the current number of bikes predicted to be in use. I’ve removed this statistic now. Previously, this assumed that the highest number of bikes available in the preceding 24 hours indicated the lowest moment of use. This is the case if no bikes are marked as faulty (or no docks are added to/removed from to the system) – however it turns out this is a significant number, at least in London. When a bike is marked as faulty, at least on the London system, then both the bike and the dock are removed from the availability numbers. By plotting this on a graph, estimates can be made of the number of bikes being marked as faulty each day. At the moment, this seems to be about 5-10% each day for London. Such bikes then get taken to the workshop, fixed, and appear to be replaced en masse just before the morning rush hour:

So now I look at the minimum number of free docking spaces in the last 24 hours instead. This should avoid the poor numbers after a heavy day of usage, where several hundred still appear to be in use at around 2am, whereas actually they are just bikes that were marked as broken on that day, on the stands. I have instead replaced it with a statistic showing the proportion of docks that don’t have bikes in them. This is effectively the same statistic as before, but now I don’t make assumptions about the “baseline” value, i.e. when no bikes are supposedly being used. In other words, previously I was effectively substracting a percentage from this value, based on the baseline percentage. I’m no longer doing that subtraction.

Finally, Toronto and Tel Aviv have just gone live with their bike share schemes, and have been duly added to the map. Ottawa, Boston and Antwerp are all launching in the next month or so.

[Update – Those missing the # number of bikes measure for Washington DC/Arlington can find it here. These measurements are carried out a different way – by looking at changes in individual docks.]

It’s Easter Sunday. In England at least, the shops are closed, public transport is restricted, and it’s a warm and sunny day. What better to do than get out on the bike. And if you don’t have a bike, the centre of many of the world’s capital cities now have cheap bikes to rent. So, today is likely to one of the biggest days for bike share so far.

Here’s a league table for some of the bike share cities I’m tracking, based on today’s figures. My metric is based on the maximum number of bikes simultaneously being used. It doesn’t take into account bikes being redistributed, breaking or being added to (or removed from) the scheme today, and assumes that at some point overnight, no bikes were being used before.

% of Bikes in Simultaneous Use – Selected Cities

Note: Above 30%, the system is extremely busy and it becomes very difficult to find a bike in many places.

America is beating Europe!

Photo by Infomatique on Flickr.