Posted on 08/16/2011 7:09:01 AM PDT by Bean Counter
Portland, OR: In a city where just about everything that can be done on a bicycle has been done, Portland still doesn't do bike sharing.
Not yet anyway.
After years of study, the Portland Bureau of Transportation has recommended using $4 million in startup funds -- half from a limited, flexible federal funding pot, half from private investors -- for an automated community bicycling program.
The City Council is expected to vote Wednesday on the concept, which has proved wildly popular in other American cities and across Europe.
"We essentially expect this to be used by everybody -- tourists, businesspeople, students, people who do and don't regularly use their bicycle," said bureau project manager Dan Bower.
Urban planners increasingly see bike sharing as the mark of a world-class city. Thousands of commuters a day already use rapidly expanding networks in Washington, D.C., Miami, Minneapolis and 12 other U.S. cities. Meanwhile, a new British study shows bicycle sharing provides a wide range of health benefits to urban residents.
Still, Commissioner Amanda Fritz said Monday that the timing is wrong and she would probably vote against the recommendation.
*SNIP*
I predict that within 90 days of this fiasco's opening, most of the bikes will either be stolen or trashed so badly as to be unusable.
Your tax dollars at work.
Oregon & Washington *ping* please...
$4million buys a lot of bikes. I would think the $2m in private funds would be a plenty. They will lay around gathering dust or be stolen or trashed anyway. Waste waste waste for feel good projects that help a tiny percentage of people.
As I recall, Madison Wisconsin has such a program, but a volunteer group uses old bikes for the program?
Remember that first TV footage of Beijing when Nixon landed there in ‘72? That is what Portland is going to look like soon.
Reminds me of healthy food snack machines. Liberal “thinking” forces these on the public. Saw one in the early 70s. Didn't get much use.
$4 million startup costs.
Let’s say 10,000 people in the area use the service regularly. That works out to $400 per regular user of the service.
Then you have the yearly costs—including the cost of new city employees. Let’s say that’s only $1 million a year. That works out to $100 per regular user of the service.
$400 per person the first year, $100 per person the following years. It doesn’t take much numbers running to realize that it would be cheaper (a lot cheaper) for the city to just give people bicycles and locks.
Four million bucks for bikes? Even at $400 a clip that’s 10,000 bikes in Portland. Really? There’s a demand for 10,000 rental bikes in Portland?
Man, there is some serious “overhead” (read: corruption) to managing this as I would be surprised to see more than 1000 bikes hit the streets.
Essentially, that's what they are doing because these bikes will disappear over time. Portland is just going about it the more expensive route.
I understand this has been somewhat successful in London. However, in Boston, it has been a total dud, at least as far as I can tell.
The reason is that they charge $10 for each rental! Far easier (and cheaper) to use public transit.
Will they use finger scanning to rent them or who does the paperwork?
We could just send the idea folks to China, it’s cheaper.
If you read the comments, you’ll see that one of the items left out of the story is the estimated cost is $6,000 per bicycle. Six thousand dollars a bike!!!
This is the kind of insanity that created the tea party.
Six Grand per bike? Are they titanium professional racing bikes? Yeah, they’ll last through a season.
Good Lord. Liberals gone wild!
I wouldn’t go that far to say it would be a failure. Over here in Minnesota, we have a bikeshare program that’s a huge success. What they did was they required the potential cyclist to pay for the rental vial credit card, put down a $200 deposit on the bike and then require the person to return the bike within 24 hours or else they lose their deposit. It costs around 30 bucks an hour to ride the bike (Which really cut into the bike rentals of the local bike rental businesses, BTW).
The risk of the bikes getting stolen and appearing in a chop shop is low, because the bikes have a distinctive look and on the open market, a bike like the ones they offer usually costs about 300$. Highly inexpensive for a bike and not worth the risk of a felony vandalism charge to chop them up and sell them.
In the bike-happy Twin Cities, the program’s become a huge success for a government program. That being said though, I think the private sector could have served the population a lot better and provided way more jobs and offered a better selection than the niceride MN pea soup colored bikes.
$6000 each for similar bikes? Man, wish I could get that contract. If those thing cost more than $200 each, think of the profits to be made, graft to be paid, money to steal from taxpayers!
And I could still afford to buy my island getaway.
No, they’re cro-moly cruiser bikes, most likely. Costs around 300$ a pop. Most likely, since this is a government buying in bulk, the bikes are going to cost a bit less per unit. The 6000 is probably for administrative costs like placing locking stations, using unionized labor to transport the lockups at 40$ an hour, paying the administrators around 80 thousand dollars a year, paying the maintenance man his 30$ an hour to maintain the credit card machines, et al.
It’s really a bike give away program.
spread the wealth dontchaknow.
http://www.portlandonline.com/transportation/index.cfm?c=50814#How much would it cost?
I’m sure 6 grand is the average cost per bike when you include everything: cost of the stand, land cost, hiring new employees, etc...
The point is at $6,000 per bike on the street, the money could be better spent.
I liked the suggestion one person made, get rickshaws instead of bikes. Each rickshaw would employee a person to pull it and thus reduce unemployment.
I said that in jest, but I’m sure some big govt. progressive is thinking “rickshaws, what a greate idea, just another kind of shovel ready job”.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.