Introducing Bicycle Sharing

Linnea Noreen
Car-sharing just got a one-up. Enter Velib, the Parisian bike-sharing program.
Zipcar (or should I say Flexcar?!) is so last year. The latest and greatest is bike-swapping – better for your health, the environment, cheaper and vastly more flexible. With the expansion of the Burke-Gilman Trail and Bike Master Plan approval, maybe Seattle is the place to start the trend, State-side?
It works like car-sharing… you pay roughly $30 for a year membership, but unlike its carbon-depended cousin, you get 30 minutes free for every trip using Velib. It is then incrementally a dollar (roughly) an hour--$1 for the first hour, $2 for the second hour-- the idea is to avoid permanent “check-outs”. Bikes are available every 300 meters (few hundred feet), and are interchangable. If you want to extend the time, you can swap it with one down the road, and the clock restarts. Clever, huh?
In Seattle, the idea would be to pair the bike system with public transit – have many pick-up locations in urban neighborhoods and suburban developments, where people can grab and go (in this case a shared bike). They ride to the park and ride, and hop on transit. After work, they hop off transit, grab one of the many bikes waiting and ride it back to neighborhood or suburban bliss.
It's really quite dreamy, and a great addition to our current transit system. Instead of wondering about whether the park and ride will be full, or how you’re going to walk the extra 2 miles to your friend’s house, you just grab a bike at the Transit Center. Even better, the system in Paris was entirely self-funded through advertising contracts. Image: a huge boon to mobility and convenience, with no taxpayer money. What a steal!

Source Cascadia Prospectus

Why transit cant compete with cars

Metro... is it really transit?

10/31/07

Linnea Noreen

Being a good, environmentally-conscious citizen, I attempted to use mass transit to get from my home on Capitol Hill to my workplace in Renton the other day.

I went to King County Metro's trip planning page. The first round (point-to-point, .5 mile walk) culled 3 options averaging 3.5 hours and 4 transfers. The second round (point-to-point, 1 mile walk) gave 3 options, with two transfers and 3 hours. Third try (house address-to-Southcenter mall): an average of 1.25 hours, between one and two transfers. That does not include the 20 minute walk from Southcenter to the office in Renton. Total: close to two hours.

Are you kidding me?! Between 2 and 3 hours to get to work... each way?

Figuring this couldn’t be right, I rode to Southcenter anyway. Two hours later, finally at work, I realized this scenario is why we will never solve our congestion problem with the current approach. Why would anyone take public transportation when it takes 2 hours to get to work... and only 20 minutes by car?