Bike-share program gets off to fast start

Mass Innovations, From the Beacon, October 2011

A new bicycle-sharing program in Boston is exceeding expectations, with more than 3,000 annual subscribers signed on by mid-September, less than two months after the program’s launch.

That puts the bike-share program, known as Hubway, on course to easily surpass its original goal of having 4,000 subscribers by its first anniversary next July.

The program makes roughly 600 bicycles available for rent at 61 locations, most within a few miles of downtown Boston. Riders typically use a bike to go from one docking station to another – from Downtown Crossing to the Boston Public Library, for example. The stations are  designed so that there will be extra slots for bikes being dropped off.

The fee structure strongly encourages short-term use of individual bikes. Subscribers (who were offered an introductory price of $60 for an annual memberships) as well as casual users (who pay $5 for a single-day pass) incur no further charge for trips of less than 30 minutes. But after the first hour of use, rates escalate sharply, topping out at as much as $100 to have a bike for an entire day.

“The whole concept is that these are shared bikes,” says Nicole Freedman, director of Boston’s bicycle programs director. “In a bike share, there tend to be short, quick trips, such as to a movie theater. You rack the bike up when you get to the movie; someone else might be using that bike [while you’re at the movie], and you might get a different bike when you leave.”

To enhance safety, all riders are expected to wear helmets, although not all do. Freedman says that some of the bike-share program’s corporate sponsors, including CVS and Walgreens, have agreed to sell helmets for as little as $8, far below their retail value. And people who pay the annual membership fee can purchase a helmet and have it mailed to them as part of the enrollment process.

Freedman says that while Boston was not the first U.S. city to introduce a large-scale bike-share program – Washington, Denver and Minneapolis did so slightly earlier – there was no such program in North America when Mayor Thomas Menino and his staff began discussing it in early 2009. A Boston Globe Magazine article that spring questioned whether the city – not known as especially bicycle-friendly – could hope to match the success of the bike-share program that was already in place in Paris.

“One of the biggest puzzles was figuring out what the business model should be,” Freedman says. “The second piece, of course, was raising money, so it would come at no cost to the city.”

The business model called for turning over operation of the Hubway system to an outside vendor: Alta Bicycle Share, a Portland, Ore., company that installed and oversees the docking-station system. Financing included $4.5 million in grants, $3 million of that from the Federal Transit Administration. New Balance, the Boston-based shoe company, paid $600,000 for naming rights; the bike-share program’s official name is New Balance Hubway.

“When we look at where to place stations, density is very helpful—density of commercial, residents, and jobs; density of young people, etc.,” Freedman says. “In those areas you’ll certainly get higher ridership.”

The program is due to expand into Cambridge, Somerville and Brookline by next spring. Other communities close to Boston also have expressed interest in joining the program, according to Freedman.

For more information, contact Nicole Freedman at (617) 429-8440.