Meetbike – European Meeting on Bicycle Networking

MeetBike – European Meeting on Bicycle Networking

Abstract for the „European Conference on Bicycle Transport and Networking (3rd – 4th April 2008 in Dresden)

Topic: “Bike sharing in Europe - State of the Art and Future Perspectives”

Bike sharing is understood as an innovative scheme for rental bikes in urban and suburban areas as well as areas of tourist interest, where a fleet of bikes is made available for the use of customers at different locations. In contrast to classic bike rental, the use of bicycles is very flexible and usually one-way capable; it provides easy access, short term rental, is open to a broad clientele and based on a transferable system.

Bike sharing has been existing in various forms for much over 30 years, but in the last few years - especially in 2007 – it has developed enormously as a new means of (public) transport, at least in Western European cities (e.g. Paris, Lyon, Barcelona). Thus a raising awareness concerning the ecological possibilities of bike sharing can be observed because of its initial function for the modal split. However, both the development and the acceptance of bike sharing as a crucial part of the transportation system differ significantly among European countries.

In this paper, three types of bike sharing will be identified and discussed:

(1) Countries with an old and entrenched tradition of cycle traffic: In these countries the acceptance of bike sharing is limited. [“Established”]

(2) Countries without cycling tradition: These countries currently show impressive acceptance rates of bike sharing offers. [“Newcomer”]

(3) Countries without established cycle traffic and currently without either willingness or resources to implement bike sharing offers in their cities as an instrument to minimize car traffic. Therefore we can not (yet) state about the acceptance in these countries. [“Undefined“]

The comparison of different countries shows further that the development of bike sharing offers in Europe depends on the existence of political supporting programmes for the promotion of bike traffic as alternative means of transport (e.g. National Cycling Plans, investments into bicycle paths), supply of public resources (finances etc.).

The hypothesis is that bike sharing as part of public transport will not be able to assert itself effectively without co-financing. Also the current offers, although most of them are running as commercial business, are widely subsidised. Four models of bike sharing co-financing are exceedingly relevant: (1) the bike sharing provider owns the right to merchandise public space for advertisement, (2) bike sharing providers, municipalities and outdoor advertisers form triangle arrangements, (3) the system is financed through merchandising patches on the bikes and bike sharing hubs or docking stations, and (4) the public transport provider and/or municipalities themselves function as operators and financiers.

At the same time, a trend towards the emergence of only a few global players can be observed. Currently, these are the internationally operating outdoor advertisers or street furniture providers JC Decaux and Clear Channel (Outdoor and Adshel). It remains to be seen if other companies offering mobility services such as DB Rent (Germany) or Effia (France), or other bike sharing providers like Nextbike (Germany), Oybike (UK), Homeport (Czech Republic), Bicincittà (Italy) or Bicibur (Spain) will be able to gain international relevance.

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The sustainability of this development has to be verified. A problem certainly is that many local authorities limited their options for actions by long-term contracts with the providers over many years. This problem - together with propositions of alternative financing concepts - will be discussed in the paper as well.