I’ve watched with some fascination the arrival of bike sharing in the Washington, DC, area—and its continued growth. I now pass a half-dozen Capital Bikeshare racks on my daily commute, and on many days—especially sunny days—they’re either empty or almost so.
The other day, I pulled up alongside a guy in a suit on a Bikeshare bike on Key Bridge and asked him something I could easily have researched online but hadn’t: did he have to return the bike where he got it? No, he did not. I was mildly surprised (and wished I could do the same with a Zipcar), but it obviously makes the system more attractive and worth the extra effort it takes to get bikes to where they’re needed.
Plans were recently announced to expand the program to Montgomery County. What took them so long?
Will bike sharing ever be as popular in the US as it is in Hangzhou, China? This city of seven million has 50,000 public bikes, available at 2,050 bike stations. Capital Bikeshare currently has a mere 1,100 bikes at 110 stations. London has 5,500 bikes. New York City is still trying to get their program off the ground.
The Financial Times recently ran a great story about bike sharing in London, which is enormously popular. One passage in particular resonated with me. The reporter decided to shadow a few riders to get a sense of how the system works:
A man in a suit with silver hair and a pink shirt was getting into the saddle, and I asked if he would mind if I could follow him. Tom Stafford, an independent financial adviser fresh in from Guildford, said that was fine. He was going to his office near Baker Street. The journey would take about 20 minutes.
Stafford, who said he uses the bikes every day unless it is actually raining—even on wet days, the bikes are used 12,000 times—rode fast. Cutting round the back of Covent Garden, he went smartly over a zebra crossing just as a woman with brown hair was stepping out. “It’s a pedestrian crossing, you idiot,” she said. Stafford plunged on. Neither of us mentioned it until a few minutes later, when Stafford confided that people on foot are the biggest danger to cyclists in London. “They’ve got their iPods in and they’re not looking,” he said. “If she decides she wants to step out … Well. I don’t want to stop when I’ve got some momentum.”
Pedestrians! [Rant redacted. If you like reading rants, click here and say the magic word.]
Mr. Stafford was probably in the wrong. He has no right to barrel into, or buzz, someone in a crosswalk. Yes, it would have been nice if the woman had understood that it’s much easier for her to stop and start than it is for a cyclist. The energy expenditures just aren’t comparable. A bicyclist naturally want to keep rolling; a bicycle is not designed for stop-and-start traffic. Unfortunately, unless you’re a cyclist, you won’t understand that—such thinking would be totally alien to you. And it’s probably silly for bicyclists to expect any random person on the street to understand it.
The bottom line is: Mr. Stafford had an opportunity to be chivalrous (if not merely law-abiding) and he passed it up. That’s a counterexample I will try ever to keep in mind. (Until the glorious day arrives when the law says everyone must always yield to bikes, hurrah!)
