China’s Bike Sharing Disaster

Health benefits of cycling could save taxpayers millions of dollars

by Guest on March 6th, 2018 at 10:45 AM

• 

By HUB Cycling

Let’s face it: finding time to squeeze a gym session into one’s already packed schedule is a pain. Which is why Vancouver family physician Dr. Rita McCracken—a.k.a. Twitter’s #FamilyDocOnABike—encourages her patients to find more efficient ways of incorporating exercise into their daily routine.

Cycling for transportation is one such “three-in-one” solution, where time spent travelling from A to B is also conveniently spent getting physical activity, as well as reducing stress levels.

“If we could get everybody on their bikes, we could see improvements in physical and mental health,” she explains. “And the conversation around personal stress management would be more practical and less intimidating.”

It has become a bit of a cliché in urban planning circles, but that doesn’t make it any less true: if hopping on a bicycle were a new drug unveiled by the pharmaceutical industry, it would command international headlines, considered by many to be “too good to be true”.

For example, the British Medical Journal studied the commuting patterns of workers over a five-year period, and in 2017, published some truly staggering results: regularly cycling to work reduced their overall risk of death by 41 percent, while reducing their risk of heart disease by 46 percent, and cancer by 45 percent.

Dr. McCracken is quick to point out the specific benefits are varied for each person, and the research is still improving, but there is one overwhelming body of evidence she can point to, without any doubt: being sedentary is bad for our health. Decades of engineering physical activity out of our lives, especially in the way we move, has had a devastating impact on our fitness.

A shocking 93 percent of Canadian children do not get the recommended amount of daily exercise, and one in three are overweight or obese. By 2040, almost three-quarters of Canadian adults will be overweight, significantly increasing their risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and costing over $100 billion per year in health care.

Sadly, this generation may be the first in the history of western civilization to live shorter lives than their parents.

On that front, Dr. McCracken is quick to praise the investment in infrastructure development in Vancouver. Thanks to political leadership we now have a network of cycle tracks throughout the city.

“Vancouver has been an amazing experiment in the introduction of infrastructure to increase access to safe cycling,” she says. “The separated bike lanes, for my family and especially my six-year-old daughter, have been absolutely transformational.”

With a 10 percent increase in national rates of physical activity estimated to translate to over $150-million in direct health-care savings per year, Dr. McCracken touts cycling as one of the biggest bangs for the infrastructure buck.

“The bike lanes aren’t free, but they’re not a huge ongoing expense either. It’s not like the creation of a massive new recreation centre, which needs constant maintenance and programming,” she states. “These bike lanes are a great way to protect an important mode of transportation, and encourage people who wouldn’t otherwise get involved.”

But Dr. McCracken doesn’t just talk the talk. She most definitely walks the walk, pedalling upward of 150 kilometres per week on her electric-assisted Haul-a-Day, bouncing effortlessly between appointments, meetings, and consultations.

“I am pretty lucky to live and work in Vancouver, and I try to practise what I preach,” she declares. “I am a professional who works in multiple locations, and has a kid to drop off at school every day, and I ride my bike to do it!”

HUGE bike GRAVEYARDS a symbol of China's EXCESS

Bikeshare in China

Bike Share Programs: Why?

After less than a year of operation, Baltimore is shutting down its bike share program for a month because so many of its bikes were stolen or are heavily damaged. The program began last November with a 175 bikes–40 percent of which had electric boosters–available for rent from 20 different locations, soon increased to 200 bikes and 20 stations.

One cyclist spent a day recently visiting all 25 stations and found only four bikes available to potential renters. The city says the private partner that is running the operation is upgrading the locks to reduce theft. In the meantime, the city has two full-time employees tracking down the GPS-equipped bikes so that other people can repair them and put them back into service.

Baltimore is far from the first city to have problems with its bike-share program. Seattle’s is attracting only half as many riders as expected. Bike share programs in New York, San Franciscoand many other cities have also had problems.

The usual solution (other than better locks) is to greatly expand the program. The key to success, according to one study, is to have a sufficient density of stations. Paris, for example, has bike stations located every 1,000 feet. Washington DC turned its bike share system from a failure to a success by expanding it from 10 stations to several hundred. Similarly, Baltimore–despite its problems–plans to expand its program to 50 stations supporting 500 bikes.

The term “success” is used with caution, however, as none of these programs come close to paying for themselves. Washington claims that its program covers its operating costs but not the millions spent starting it up. Most other programs that claim to be successful don’t even cover their operating costs.

Those costs can be significant. For one thing, even the best programs still suffer from thefts and vandalism. Paris, which has the largest bike-share program in the world outside of China, reports that well over half its bikes are stolen or vandalized each year.

Another problem is balancing. If left alone, bikes tend to accumulate at some stations and disappear from others. Washington DC has two people driving around in vans to move bikes from overcrowded stations to empty ones.

Aside from the usual mumbo-jumbo about how all transportation loses money so bikes should too, the fundamental question is why should cities have bike-sharing programs at all? Baltimore spent $2.36 million on its program of 200 bikes; that’s an average of nearly $12,000 per bike. It seems like there are more cost-effective ways of encouraging cycling or improving transportation.

The Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP) offers six reasons for bike-sharing programs:

1. Reduce congestion and air quality;
2. Increase accessibility;
3. Increase the reach of transit;
4. Improve the image of cycling;
5. Provide complementary services to public transport;
6. Improve the health of the residents.

As far as I can tell, no one has ever investigated to see whether any bike-share program has accomplished any of these objectives, much less all of them. Portland’s Biketown system of 100 stations and 1,000 bikes (200 of which were vandalized in one day) claims to have served 189,000 trips in its first eight months, or fewer than 800 trips per day. Yet the American Community Survey says that more than 23,400 Portlanders commute to work by bicycle, which means the bike-share program is a drop in the bucket of Portland cycling. How many of those 800 Biketown trips would otherwise have been on personally owned bikes or walking, which means they did nothing to relieve congestion or reduce air pollution?

At the same time, bike sharing has been criticized because its users are mainly white men. This means bike-sharing programs are not only supposed to relieve congestion and support public transit, they have to attract low-income minorities by offering heavily discounted annual passes. Chattanooga, for example, offers annual unlimited rides to low-income people for $5 (instead of a regular fee of $50), while Portland does the same for $35 (instead of $144). That, of course, merely increases the subsidy, and there’s no guarantee that the “low-income people” getting the discounted passes are truly poor or merely (as seems likely in Portland) “voluntary poor.”

The IDTP report inadvertently offers the real reason for bike share when it says, “It is possible to plan and implement a system in one mayoral term.” In other words, why should politicians plan a light-rail line that won’t be completed until long after they’ve left office when they can plan and take credit for a bike-share program whose beneficiaries (including the private partners) will help them in their next re-election campaign?

Certainly the private partners have a lot to gain from bike sharing. Baltimore is paying its private partner $1,000 for each eight-speed bike and $1,300 for the electric-assist bikes. Yet I can find similarly designed three-speed bikes and a variety of other 8- to 24-speed city bikes for around $500 and electric assist bikes for as little as $600.

In short, bike sharing seems to be mainly a political ploy to make elected officials look hip and build up support from the few people and companies that truly benefit from the programs. Cities that are truly interested in cycling should do things like maintain the streets (cyclists find rough pavement far more annoying than auto users), make traffic signals responsive to cyclists, and provide safe bicycle boulevards parallel to major arterials.

The "Steve Kinsey Memorial Bike Bridge" is an epic boondoogle

Dick Spotswood on closing a lane on the Richmond San Rafael Bridge between Marin County and Richmond, CA at a total cost of $60 million dollars PLUS the elimination of a traffic lane.  It is simply unacceptable.  Less than 100 people per day are expected to use it.  Steve Kinsey, former Marin County Supervisor and MTC commissioner is responsible for its adaption.

Meet the Latina Bicycle Brigade Fighting Against Gender-Based Violence

The Ovarian Psycos of East L.A. are an all-woman-of-color cycling collective carving out space for themselves in a hostile urban environment.

• NATALIE DELGADILLO
 
• @ndelgadillo07
 
• Jul 22, 2016 
• 2 Comments

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Michael Raines

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This story originally appeared in Spanish on our sister site, CityLab Latino.

In a way, it was a stroke of luck when Xela De la X’s car broke down in the summer of 2010. Looking for another way to get to work, she began riding her bicycle, something she had never been allowed to do as a child growing up in the East Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights.

But her rides to work quickly turned into reminders of the culture that made her parents want to keep her home in the first place. "The catcalls felt worse than when I would walk," says De la X, a musician and artist in the Boyle Heights neighborhood who uses this name as a pseudonym. "People paid more attention to me simply because I was a woman on my bike in downtown."

The experience planted a seed. One day when she was traveling home from work, several traffic lights went out because of a power outage. Traffic ground to a halt. "But I was able to maneuver through the traffic without stopping,” says De la X. “And I remember thinking, ‘this is what freedom feels like. This is what it feels like not to have obstacles blocking your movement.’ And I wanted to feel like that again."

So she set about creating a space that could bottle that feeling. De la X founded the Ovarian Psycos, a group of women cyclists in Los Angeles, many of them residents of Boyle Heights. The "Ovas," as they call themselves, are the subject of a new documentary directed by Kate Trumbull-LaValle and Joanna Sokolowski, which premiered in Los Angeles on July 9.

The film follows the lives of Xela, Andi Xoch (another member of the group and an artist in the community) and Evie, a 21-year-old newcomer who struggles to balance her responsibilities working part-time, going to school and organizing with the Ovas.

The documentary is an intimate glimpse into the lives of these women as they navigate personal struggles and difficult activist work. There is Xela’s fraught relationship with her mother, who failed to protect her from a sexually abusive father, and her struggle to raise her own daughter Yoli in a way that makes her feel strong and whole and loved. There is Andi’s endeavor to connect with her mother and sister, who don’t seem to really understand her involvement with the group. And there is Evie’s internal conflict as her family falls into financial trouble and she has to decide how much time she can give to the Ovas.

But behind this intimate personal story, there is a political one. Twice, the documentary cuts to news footage of the deaths of two young women from the neighborhood, one killed by her boyfriend in the parking lot of her school, and another found dead in Hollenbeck Park Lake in Boyle Heights. The women live surrounded by the threat of violence, many times from the men who are their neighbors. All of their families, too, have lived in fear that this violence will touch their lives someday.

“When I was a kid, I couldn’t do anything really except stay in my room and sometimes watch TV,” says De la X. “I wasn’t allowed on the front porch or in the backyard. Meanwhile, my brothers could go wherever they wanted. Growing up like that, it really gave me a sense of urgency [to change things], but I also had mad amounts of rage,” she says.

In the film, De La X visits the bedroom where she spent so many hours as a child. She almost cannot contain her sadness, breaking into tears before she can finish speaking to the camera. It’s a different kind of existence than the one she lives now, and the one that her daughter Yoli gets to enjoy, joining her mother on rides with the Ovas.

Every month, the collective hosts "Luna Rides," nighttime trips where riders roam the streets under the full moon. Before mounting, they have dialogues about problems they're facing in the community and in their personal lives. They usually have a speaker, and every participant gets a "spoke card" to put between the wheels of her bike, full of information on resources for victims of sexual or domestic violence, among others.

Once a year, the collective also organizes a 26-mile journey called the "Clitoral Mass," which has grown and now takes place in six cities. Hundreds of women come out and ride together, watching out for cars and shouting calls to one another, both joyful and rebellious.

"When we bike together, especially at night, we laugh in the face of fear," says De La X. "We laugh in the face of all these ideas about how women should be."

Fifth woman attacked by acid-throwing cyclist in Berlin

Fifth woman attacked by acid-throwing cyclist in Berlin

File photo: DPA.
A Berlin woman reported being attacked this week by a cyclist who threw acid in her face - the fifth such case in the capital city since December.


According to police, the 27-year-old woman was walking in the eastern district of Friedrichshain late on Monday night when an unknown cyclist sprayed her in the face with a liquid, which fire services said was acidic. The exact substance is not yet known.

The woman told police that the male cyclist was dressed in dark colours, and had continued biking after the attack.

The woman went to hospital to be treated for serious damage to her eyes, according to local broadcaster rbb.

This was the fifth such case reported since December last year. In January, another 27-year-old woman in the eastern Prenzlauer Berg neighbourhood was also attacked by a male bike rider in a similar way.

In December, a cyclist attacked three women with a skin-irritating liquid. In at least one of these attacks, the substance was found to be battery acid.

Cyclists who IGNORE the traffic laws should be ticketed.

Angry Cyclist skit on Portlandia (Have you seen this guy in Marin?)

The Richmond Bridge Bike Path – A Bridge too Far?

While acknowledging that bicycle infrastructure is behind the curve and merits increased expenditure, we are seeing bike path projects where expenditures have been getting out of hand. Transportation funding is dwindling, the SMART train already diverted $11.4m of funding earmarked to solve congestion at the 101 Greenbrae interchange.
Thanks to highly effective bicycle lobbyists and “transit oriented development” Marin’s commuters face another diversion of transportation funding.  The Cal Park tunnel  project works out at a cost of $675,000 to remove one car from our roads. That’s quite an extraordinary expense.  And we now look set to follow this boondoggle with another bike path costing even more over the Richmond San Rafael Bridge.

The Cal Park Tunnel – the $27m Bikers Boondoggle

SF Streetsblog, a pro-cycling and TOD site, reports:

After 17 years of planning, the Cal Park tunnel will open to Marin County cyclists today, providing a shorter, safer route between San Rafael and the Larkspur Ferry for an estimated 800,000 riders a year.
The 1.1-mile project includes class 1 bike lanes to connect the 1,106-foot bore with Sir Francis Drake Boulevard on the south and Anderson Road in San Rafael

So how much did the project cost? The initial estimate was $3m but by completion the cost had ballooned to $27m.

Claim: 800,000 Annual Riders. Reality: 40 an Hour at Peak

It’s claimed that tunnel will be used by 800,000 riders a year –  a seemingly enormous number. This translates to 2,191 riders today if the claim is to be believed. Consider for perspective that the population of Marin is only 258,365 according to the latest US Census figures.
This 800,000 figure is conveniently manipulated – inflating ridership into an annual figure. Google does not reveal any source or basis from which this figure were derived as a future projection. If we were to use the same basis of calculation to assess 101 traffic today (not the future) at N San Pedro Road we could arrive at this comparson:
Cal Park Bike Users:        800,000
(projected annual future, date unspecified)
101 Users :  135,050,000
(2013 actual)
Even using this highly inflated 800,000 pie in the sky number the annual bike count in the future is 0.6% of 101 use.
Today, nearly four years after the tunnel’s completion the reality is far from the story we’ve been sold of 800,000 annual or 2,191 daily users. Walk Bike Marin publishes bike counts for 18 locations with the total ridership at peak hour for weekdays an aggregate of 963 last year. This peaked 2 years prior in 2011 at 1,295 cyclists per hour across the 18 locations. Cal Park tunnel was one of those locations.

Click for larger image

The actual bike counts for Cal Park tunnel itself are dismal – attaining an initial 60 riders average per hour during weekday peaks in 2011 but since dropping to just 40 in 2013 (see chart, left).
If the 800,000 riders per year claim is to believed we should be seeing 2,191 riders per day – most during those peak hours. Not a mere 40.
Then we need to translate the benefit –  it might be argued that the tunnel removed 40 riders from Marin’s roads during peak rush hour. Of course this is  optimistic – it’s likely that some of those 40 were already commuting by bike, the tunnel improved their commute.
Here’s the math using the optimistic assumptions:
Expenditure: $27 million
Cars Removed: 40 at best (some cyclists may have cycled prior to the tunnel’s construction)
Cost per Car Removed: $675,000
Compare this to the Novato Narrows project to add HOV lanes to 101. A recent 1.3 mile section of the project cost just $9m and will increase capacity by 1,200 cars or 1,356 people at peak – equivalent to add a capacity of 1 person for $6,637. That capacity will get used. The Novato Narrows increases transportation capacity for less than a hundredth of the cost of the Cal Park tunnel bike path.
Imagine – how many people would take transit or bike or work from home if we paid them anything even close to $675,000. This represents an almighty benefit from the taxpayer to a very small  group. Name another group that receives anything like that amount. Imagine if we had spent that same $27m on genuine traffic choke points in Marin – how much could we have increased mobility and road capacity?

The Richmond Bridge Bike Path – the Next Boondoggle

One would have thought we would have learned from the Cal Park Tunnel boondoggle. But no – the next boondoggle is lining itself up – the Richmond Bridge bike path.
Here are the actual statistics on Richmond Bridge traffic counts vs. likely bike usage. On page 108 of  Caltrans “2013 Traffic Volumes on California State Highways“ the Richmond Parkway traffic count for peak is 13,000 vehicles per hour. This bridge has acute traffic issues with substantial daily backups.
The US Department of Transportation’s 2009 Travel Trends Survey  tells us that average vehicle occupancy for trips to and from work is 1.13. This means 14,690 vehicle users who are directly delayed or inconvenienced; this traffic routinely backs up onto highway 101 further delaying an additional 14,000+ vehicles per hour at Lucky Drive or 15,280 people. That’s 131m users annually if we apply the bike lobbies counting method (but this is an actual, not an unsubstantiated forecast). This lost time of those 131m road users translates into real impact, in terms of both time wasted and economic waste. For instance in the time spent in traffic:

• a plumber or electrician could have fitted in another call (e.g. a plumber, electrician…)
• someone who would have taken a shopping trip would be dissuaded from doing so due to known traffic delays
• a worker who could otherwise have commuted to Marin would discount considering a job in our county due to the severe traffic delays
• a company considering locating in Marin might be turned away by our transportation issues, causing an economic opportunity loss

Walk Bike Marin’s Bike Path Counts – click for larger image

By comparison Walk Bike Marin’s bike count figures show 963 bikes were counted at 18 different Marin locations during peak hours. That works out at 53.5 cyclists per location. Therefore we might reasonable assume bridge usage would look like this during a peak hour:
Vehicle users: 14,690
Bike users: 53.5
Bike users as a percentage of vehicle users: 0.37%
(It’s a near meaningless figure, almost a rounding error).
The cost of adding an extra lane to the Richmond San Rafeal Bridge is estimated to be $70m (Source: MarinIJ, Sept 22nd 2014). But the majority of the expense and reasons for delay is that complex planning is needed to build the entrance to the bike path that is planned along the upper deck of the bridge. The author would suggest that at least half of the $70m is to plan the bike path. This is the Cal Park tunnel all over again – $35m+ to help a small number of cyclists.
The real impact is that tens of thousands of vehicle users on the Richmond Bridge and on 101 (caused by backups) are being delayed all for the benefit of a tiny handful of  cyclists. This just isn’t sustainable – either economically or in terms of emissions.

Benefits of a Bike Path Network

Richmond Bridge current car users vs. likely cyclists – click for larger image

It’s important to point out that Marin does not have a complete bike path network. Creation of such a network could double or triple bike usage. But even when tripled the numbers remain in the weeds compared to car use.
Only the most hardened riders would cross a long, cold, windy bridge such as the Richmond San Rafael.
Instead of channeling money into “hero projects” we should be seeking to improve the most popular bike paths where there is a realistic return on investment. How many miles of regular bike paths could have been built using the millions spent on the Cal Park Tunnel or now set to be spent on the Richmond San Rafael Bridge bike path?
Ultimately this misallocation to “hero project” bike paths is a disservice to bikers. How many accidents could have been avoided? How many more might have cycled to school and removed cars from our roads?

The Moral – Let’s Restore Accountability

Federal Gas Tax Revenue is Falling. Source Pew analysis of Federal Highway Administration Data. Click to see larger image.

Transportation funding is being squeezed:

• Gas taxes are dropping as cars are becoming increasingly fuel efficient, with more hybrids and EVs on our roads – especially in Marin
• Funds generated by cars through gas taxes and bridge tolls are being diverted to pet projects such as the SMART train and these hero bike projects.

We simply cannot afford to be ineffective with our tax dollars. This is affecting thousands of people every day through delays, lost income, lost economic benefits and time spent in traffic we’ll never get back.
Let’s demand sanity and ensure that adding an additional Eastbound lane to the Richmond San Rafael Bridge is not delayed any further.