TheAgitator.com
Let Them Ride Bikes
Thursday, August 14th, 2008DC is bike crazy this week as it becomes the first major city in America to unveil a bike sharing program. A.) The bikes are really ugly and B.) I don’t even want to know what the taxpayer cost is, but it’s probably not as exorbitant as the $4 million price tag on the new Bike Station planned for Union Station, which will hold 180 bikes for the low low price of $1 a day per bike or $100 a year. It seems to me like there are already a lot of free places to park in that general area, aren’t there?
But okay. Let’s assume that they’ll take down all the street signs, parking meters, and trees around Union Station or–more likely–that they’ll make it illegal to park a bike on a street sign or parking meter there.
Part of the purpose of the bike station would be so that MARC train commuters could keep a bike at Union Station overnight for use in DC. Commuters obviously can’t leave their bikes on the very large free bike rack that’s already at Union Station. Why? Jim Sebastion of DDOT told our local ABC affiliate, “Right now, you really don’t want to leave your bike there overnight.”
Now I’ve never had a problem leaving my bike there overnight, which I’ve done often. Indeed, the only bike I’ve ever had stolen in DC was in broad daylight about 2 months ago, when I left it for no more than 20 minutes securely locked up outside a certain libertarian think tank.
But okay. I’ll buy the proposition that it’s unsafe to leave a bike at Union Station overnight.
This seems like exactly the kind of problem that could be solved by a spiffy new bike sharing program! But wait, somehow Union Station–one of the most heavily used metro stations in the city–doesn’t have a SmartBike location (but Shaw does! Go Shaw!). Peculiar.
But okay. That was probably just an oversight on someone’s part, I’m sure. Let’s move on.
Is a $4 million bike storage facility the answer? Let’s do some math: I’ll be generous and say that maybe they sell 100 spots at $100 a year and the other 80 spots all get rented twice a day, 365 days a year. That’s $68,400 a year. Heck, we’ll have that bad boy paid off in only 58 years!
Wouldn’t it be cheaper and easier to just offer the first 20,000 would-be bike thieves outside of Union Station two hundred bucks not to steal a bike? Or hell, for the bargain basement price of $2 million, I’ll sleep out there every night and scare the thieves away myself.
Sheesh.
–Mary Q. Contrarian
“Math is hard!”
Bike-share bikes are ugly by design, to reduce the incentive to steal them. In large part this is done by making them distinctive and recognizable — they don’t look anything like common bikes. Regarding the secure bike storage, I think a cheaper solution would have been to subsidize theft insurance.
Anything that encourages more people to bike generates revenue in ways other than simple parking fees. Less wear on roads, lower gas prices, lower medical costs due to more fit people etc etc. Look at the big picture Mary
What? Weren’t we just discussing how Critical Mass wants to increase the use of bikes in cities? Don’t the people of DC think the DC cops saw the video of the NY cop body slamming a biker for no apparent reason? And weren’t we recently discussing unconstitutional checkpoints in DC neighborhoods? I’m all for increasing the use of bikes in cities, but my skepticism of this program in view of what the NYPD has done to bikers in the last couple of weeks tells me this could result in disaster.
How does creating $1 a day bike parking, when there is free bike parking available, encourage more people to bike? If they do make it illegal to park for free (and I’d wager that they will) then it will probably encourage less biking.
Heck, we’ll have that bad boy paid off in only 58 years!
Except you forget the cost to maintain it for 58 years. If we start a pool on this, my vote is 89 years. I’ll put up a dollar. If we all put up a dollar and invest it, our children or grandkids could have one hell of a payday.
Of course, that assumes they don’t tear it down by then. I mean who is going to use a bike when we need hoverboard storage! We should have them sometime in the next 7 years.
Renting spaces is not the only planned source of revenue from the $4M site, so your math is suspect. On the other hand, bicycling is a seasonal activity and neither bike nor spot rental is going to see much business in the winter. And I wonder how much maintenance on bicycles left outdoors 24-7 will cost. But even if the scheme does pay for itself quickly, that doesn’t justify the city doing so. Better to just relax zoning laws a bit and let some enterprising company handle it.
It doesn’t sound like a bad idea exactly, but I’m sure a better use could be found for the money, such as letting taxpayers keep it in the first place.
Sam — I suspect driving cars generates more revenue for the government than it consumes. Have you read any of the stories floating around about cities with budget problems because gasoline tax intake is dropping as people drive less to save money?
Hell, for $4m, I’m sure DC could have just bought 20,000 bikes and left them unlocked outside Union Station and that’d still work better
Also, 180 spaces? That doesn’t seem like enough to save 4 million dollars in wear-and-tear anytime soon. Thousands of people must go through Union Station every day…
Mary is lucky. Most bicyclists I know in the DC area consider it a yearly lease, because that’d the median time before it’s stolen (MTBIS).
According to crimemap.dc.gov, there were 33 thefts last year within 500 feet of Union Station. It doesn’t say if any of those thefts were bikes. If that fits your comfort level for leaving a bike overnight, cool.
MTC in Minnesota offers “bike lockers” downtown and on major bus and lightrail lanes. Not only is something that pays for itself but offers a secure and convenient location to dump your bike without worrying about it.
(just speaking as someone who has had their bike stolen more than a few times – including outside of a major bank facility which just happens to be their main vault – I didn’t report that on my Facebook profile – will I get banned from this site because of that MQC?)
@chance
Most bike thefts aren’t reported so I don’t know how reliable those statistics can be.
No doubt you’re right. When my last bike was stolen, I didn’t bother reporting it either. Then again, I had the next to cheapest one I could find, so my feelings were hurt more than my wallet.
The problem with what is logical is that which already is.
Good idea. Lousy execution. Must be a government program.
It’s a pretty nice program in Paris, but the bikes accumulate at the bottom of hills (and Paris is pretty flat), and Parisian drivers are not nearly as moronic/cell-phone-talky/homocidal.
von Laue – You’ve got to be kidding. I’ve seen Parisian traffic, and I’ve driven in DC… and the Parisians take the gold as far as homicidal driving is concerned.
At least DC didn’t pay $5 million for self-cleaning toilets only to later sell them for $12,000.