The Global Bike-Share Boom: An Interactive History | Hacker News Reader

The Global Bike-Share Boom: An Interactive History

citylab.com

27 pointselorant39 comments

I can't even scroll this page. (FF 40, using mousewheel)

I think front end developers - and I am one - are becoming increasingly lazy about testing in multiple browsers. Perhaps the improvements in browser standardisation have lulled us into a false sense of security.

As you say, the page is basically broken in Firefox.

Same here. Disabling javascript lets you scroll the page. Why do people keep doing this - it's a straightforward article with text and pictures. This could be done in HTML 2.0.

Same. Disabling page styles and javascript makes it much more readable.

I find it a bit ironic that using noscript in this case actually makes a "fancy" website function better.

Fanciness is often the opposite of functionality.

I can. It scrolls one pixel per mousewheel click.

I see it as a story of success of an old idea through tech-evolution. The idea is so obvious. It is horrible that I have to lock my bike. I would much prefer not to! And I would be happy to share my bike with others. I could even tolerate some low loss rate. I love to bike, and I love when other people bike. But because people, you cannot simply buy 1.000 bikes and spread them all over the city. People will abuse every system, if it is too easy to abuse. So you need some kind of control. And this control came with GPS, mobile internet, mobile cellphones and magnetic cards. I don't even know if the bikes in our Hamburg sharing system are GPS-monitored. But it's possible. And sure, I could find a way to register with fake data - but there would be some chance to get caught. This feeling of everything-is-connected, everything-is-monitorable is a strong force to make antisocial behavior less likely. I realize that sounds somehow dystopian, but on the other hand, we now have bike sharing.

Wow. Yay NSA because, bike sharing.

Anyway, I doubt the utility of bike sharing because there can never be enough bikes. Lots of traffic is modal at times of the day (heading to work; going shopping; heading home) so bikes end up clumped. You can't depend upon there being a bike available, so you have to be prepared to walk. That's workable in dense cities only.

I know what you mean re: reliability, but you also can't doubt that utility to all those riders that took the bikes and left the rack empty!

Matching the supply of bikes to demand is an interesting problem. The good systems try to address clumping by "re-balancing." In DC, they'd have vans that would move bikes to keep up with demand patterns.[1]

Also, as you've said, integrating bike shares with alternatives (like walking or transit) mitigates the reliability issue somewhat.

[1] See https://www.capitalbikeshare.com/news/2015/04/02/the-system-...

I don't deny the utility of bikes. But does 'sharing' just become 'giving bikes away to early commuters'? Because essentially the same people are getting the neighborhood bikes every day.

Why can't there be enough bikes to cover the spikes as well?

Because the total capital cost would be very high and the marginal benefit of extra bikes very low. The same reason we don't produce larger numbers of other capital goods.

That would be, one bike per person. SO then what would be the point? We are no longer 'sharing' bikes.

Just because there are spikes, doesn't mean that no sharing can occur; e.g. people commuting from east to west at 0800, while someone else might commute in the opposite direction at 0900.

Also, the commuting bikes would be available at the city centre for most of the day, allowing people who need to move around during the day to reuse them.

The Netherlands got a nation wide bike sharing program in 2003, started at 70 locations and since 2013 has had over 250 locations. Every city in The Netherlands has these bike locations, all with the same system, so I'm not sure why they say Spain was the leader with 132 locations.

Maybe it's the chauvinist in me but I felt like I should emphasize 1965 was not the last time we did something awesome related to sharing bikes :P

(Note it's significantly less convenient for tourists to rent these bikes, you need a 10e/year membership which you need to submit a photo and receive a card by mail for)

That's something slightly different; bikes can only be fetched from and returned to train stations (possibly with some exceptions; I'm too lazy to check that now). With modern bike-sharing [which I guess is what this is about; the site's UI is too awful to read it], the idea is that, wherever you are within the coverage area of the bike sharing plan, a place to rent a bike is within walking distance, and wherever you are on a bike, a place to drop it off is nearby.

The Netherlands doesn't do much bike sharing that way because most people own bikes. Those that do not, and are likely to rent one, will likely arrive by train, so having collection points at train stations only is deemed sufficient.

The one exception I know of is the national park the Hoge Veluwe, which has a truly traditional 1965-style bike sharing program (completely free)

Well done to my fellow Europeans in the Netherlands for thinking of that bike-sharing utopia some 50 years ago.

It's been implemented with massive success here in Paris and it's nothing short of awesome.

I just returned from Paris and was astonished at how much better the bike sharing was as compared to San Francisco's version. Clearly, they'd invested much more time and money into their program but it was so pleasant to be able to count on bikes no matter where you were in the city to get around.

A map of their locations: http://i.imgur.com/5PkkmFL.png

Yes and yes. For all its shortcomings and challenges, bike sharing led millions to re-explore their city and question the role of the car in commuting.

The only thing that concerns me overall about bike sharing is helmet use. It's so easy to casually walk up and rent a bike that riders rarely consider safety. In Chicago, I frequently see Divvy users riding around in traffic without a helmet.

Alternatively you're carrying a helmet everywhere you go for no reason. I'm not sure how to solve that.

As of last summer, DC's system had its 7 millionth ride, and at least as of that time, there had been no fatalities and only one life-threatening injury (see http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2014/06/03... ). As far as I know there have been no deaths since, either, despite virtually no users of the system wearing helmets. The actual risk associated with helmetless riding, and especially helmetless riding on bikeshare bikes, is dramatically overblown. Speeds on chunky slow bikes in an urban context are simply not high enough for accidents to be likely to result in serious injury.

Bike helmet necessity is a signal that the local government has failed to make the streets safe.

Helmet use is near non-existent in countries such as The Netherlands and Denmark, and yet cyclists in those countries are dramatically safer than cyclists than the USA.

Essentially the safety gain achieved by using a helmet is utterly dwarfed by the safety gains that result from separated bike lanes and high quality cycling infrastructure.

I'm an avid biker (own 4) and Divvy user. I'm in the group that rarely (if ever) uses a helmet on a bike share bike but always on my own bikes, and to be honest it seems perfectly safe. The bikes are slow, very heavy with a low center of gravity and very easy to hop on/off of. It's difficult to fall off them in a way that a helmet would matter.

Obviously a helmet is better than no helmet but the biggest time you'd need one on those bikes is if you get hit by a car. Avoiding the crash completely is the best bet there. Having more people on bikes (so drivers know to look) should do more for safety than wearing a helmet.

As a frequent cyclist who chooses whether to wear my helmet depending on the type of ride I'm going on, I am so damn tired of people always dragging out the same old tired arguments about bike helmets. All you have to do is say the word "bicycle" and otherwise rational people suddenly turn into overprotective suburban soccer moms. The way people talk about helmets, you'd think the average person knows at least five people who've died because they fell off a bicycle and their skulls exploded.

Here are some facts:

In 2013, 32,719 people were killed in road accidents.

Also in 2013, 4,735 pedestrians were killed. The leading cause of injury to pedestrians is tripping and falling, but by far the leading cause of death is being hit by a car.

For cyclists in 2013, 743 were killed. The leading cause of cyclist deaths is, again, being hit by a car.

At this point, even though these numbers show that bicycle deaths account for only .02% of deaths in the US each year (which completely disqualifies cycling accidents from being anywhere close to a health epidemic) people will inevitably point out that not many people ride bicycles, so that 743 is actually quite a large number. Of course cars kill 20 times as many pedestrians as they do cyclists, because there are so many pedestrians, and so few cyclists, right?

While there's nothing wrong with that statement, the fallacy is in thinking that you can just extrapolate from there with simple multiplication. Cycling accounts for approximately 1% of all trips taken in the US. So the logic is that if cycling accounted for 100% of all trips, instead of 32,719 we'd have 74,300 people dying in road accidents! Terrifying!

Except it doesn't work that way. Remember that the leading cause of death to both pedestrians and cyclists alike is cars. So if 100% of road traffic were cyclists, there wouldn't be any cars to kill anyone.

Now is a good time to bring up The Netherlands, a country where cycling accounts for 27% of all trips, and in cities (where accidents of all types are much more likely) that number rises to more like 50%. Even worse, practically nobody wears bike helmets there! So clearly, their hospitals must be overflowing with people suffering from exploded skulls. One can only imagine the carnage on their streets... because it doesn't exist. In 2013, 184 cyclists died in The Netherlands, which is .001% of their population. Our 743 account for .0002% of our population, but if you multiply that by 27 (1% vs. 27% of all trips taken) you get .006%, which is 6 times as many deaths per capita.

In other words, it's much safer to be a cyclist in a country where nobody wears a helmet but everybody bikes, than it is to be a cyclist in a country where virtually nobody does it, but at least you have a piece of styrofoam strapped to your head.

Why? Because when more people bike, we build more infrastructure to support bikes. Drivers become more aware of bikes, and instead of just gnashing their teeth and dangerously swerving around them, they're familiar with how bikes move through traffic and see them as just another part of driving on a road. Cyclists are more visible, motorists are more prepared, and everybody gets along better. And bikeshare programs are exactly the kind of thing to promote more people riding bikes.

But wait, we still haven't trotted out everyone's favorite last-ditch argument when all else fails! "No matter what you say about big-picture statistics, you'd still be safer wearing a helmet."

Yes. This is true. Adding more shock absorption to the human skull can protect the brain from traumatic injury. In fact, it's so true that it applies to virtually every human activity. So let's really follow through, and make it mandatory to wear a helmet while driving or riding in an automobile. Let's make it mandatory for pedestrians to wear helmets. Why stop there? Let's make it mandatory to wear full body armor any time you leave the house, and let's make it illegal to sell or build anything with sharp corners. Let's spend our entire lives suspended in smooth carbon fiber tanks full of Jell-O, so that nothing is a danger to our well-being until a heart attack ends it all!

Incidentally, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US, is a real health epidemic, and is preventable by putting your butt in a bike seat and riding a few miles every day.

Sources:

http://www.pedbikeinfo.org/data/factsheet_crash.cfm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...

https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/traffic-fatali...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_the_Netherlands

http://www.treehugger.com/bikes/why-dutch-dont-wear-helmets....

But even in the Netherlands riding a bicycle _is_ dangerous for some groups. In 2014, the age distribution of those killed in traffic on a bicycle was:

  -  0-15: 13
  - 15-20:  8
  - 20-30:  6
  - 30-40:  5
  - 40-50: 16
  - 50-60: 16
  - 60-70: 27
  - 70-80: 56
  - 80+  : 38

Yes, over half the people killed riding bikes were 70+ years old. That is a cause for concern for planners, and they don't know yet how to tackle it. As always, it likely will be through a combination of factors. For example, technical solutions are being developed that warn cyclists about traffic coming from behind, but e-bikes likely need a good look, too, as their rapid acceleration and (for the elderly) high top speeds seem to play a role.

It is not so much a cause of concern that elderly people are advised to stop cycling, though. The benefits of exercise and of the independence that cycling brings the elderly are thought to more than outweigh the traffic risks.

(Also, chances are that soon, fewer people will die in traffic in a car than on a bicycle. 2014 already was close, with 187 vs 185; see http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/publication/?VW=T&DM=SLnl&PA=...)

I think this distribution would work with any physical activity. It is not just a cycling thing.

The reason is easy to understand: an accident that would cause only minor injuries on a 30 years old person may cause life threatening injuries on an elder person. Bones are weaker after certain age, and recovering from injuries is harder.

For relative frequencies, sure, but these are absolute numbers. You won't find them in the states, for example, because Very few senior ride bicycles there.

Also, and now that I think of it, probably more important: the absolute number of deaths for younger people has decreased significantly, while that of seniors has not. Part of that is due to having more seniors and fewer children, but part of it also is that policy has worked in making cycling safer for juniors, but not so much for seniors.

Risk of death is a only one metric for evaluating helmet use, and it's arguably a poor one since it is relatively uncommon (partly thanks to medical intervention). In addition to death, bicycle accidents can also cause varying degrees of physical and mental debilitation. One of the most important things to examine in the discussion of helmet use is the risk of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Helmets do help there, significantly [1].

From the cited article:

"[...] One third of the cyclists who are admitted to hospital with serious injury after a traffic crash are diagnosed with head/brain injury. Approximately three-quarters of these cyclists sustain this head/brain injury in crashes not involving a motor vehicle. As many as nine out of ten young children who sustain head/brain injury, do so in crashes not involving a motor vehicle. In the majority of cases these are bicycle-only crashes.

Research has shown that a bicycle helmet provides protection against serious head and brain injury. The most recent estimate (Elvik, 2011) indicates that the risk of head injuries is 1.72 times higher for cyclists not wearing a helmet than it is for cyclists who do wear a helmet, with a 95% confidence interval of 1.33-2.22. For brain injury the risk seems to be 2.13 times higher, with a 95% confidence interval of 1.33-3.45. [...]"

There are many other studies, with the overwhelming majority pointing to helmets being significantly protective against TBIs:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=bicycle+helmet+trau...

If you're going to be hit by a truck, there's only so much you can do. In the more likely scenario where you're falling to the ground and will hit your head, a helmet will most likely help your outcome. I for one don't want to live with a debilitating and irreversible brain injury, so I always cycle with a helmet.

1. https://www.swov.nl/rapport/Factsheets/UK/FS_Bicycle_helmets...

So you've provided a more thorough version of the "No matter what you say about big-picture statistics, you'd still be safer wearing a helmet" argument.

I don't have any problem with you choosing to wear a helmet because you want to avoid TBI, but unless you're also wearing a helmet every time you get in a car, you're behaving irrationally.

Also, here's another study and some choice quotes:

"Use of a helmet was only associated with a 10% decreased risk of severe injury, a difference which was not statistically significant."

"Patients with neck injuries were much more likely to be severly injured (OR=4.09) and hospitalized (OR=2.56) than were patients without neck injuries. They were also 15 times more likely to die than those without neck injuries [...] There was no association of neck injury with helmet use, either in the entire group of patients with neck injury (OR=0.9, 95% CI 0.6 to 1.4, adjusted for age)"

"Males were 2.4 times more likely, those hit by motor vehicles 14.1 times more likely, and those traveling at self reported speeds > 15 mph, 2.6 times more likely to be killed."

1. http://bmj-injuryprev.highwire.org/content/3/2/110.full.pdf

The point is that when you're cycling or doing any activity, you expose yourself to a combination of risks. I've never argued that helmet use isn't a valid way to decrease certain risks (I wear mine daily when commuting in traffic, and sometimes when hitting the bike path out of the city I leave it at home), but it's detrimental that we focus on that as the only cause of risk, because it causes people to ignore everything else.

People like telling other people to wear helmets because it's an easy solution. But it only (kind of) solves one problem, and even worse, it's used as a scapegoat, a means to blame the victim. A woman gets flattened into 2 dimensions by a tractor trailer while riding her bike, but what's this? She wasn't wearing her helmet?? Come on people, wear your helmet!

It's as if we were to address the entire issue of auto safety with "wear a seatbelt!" and considered the matter closed even if a kid who's never driven before is going 100mph through a residential neighborhood with his eyes closed.

> Incidentally, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US, is a real health epidemic, and is preventable by putting your butt in a bike seat and riding a few miles every day.

Standing ovation.

Great reply, should make it a blog post and link to it every chance you get.

Seattle actually has optional helmet rental alongside their bike share. You pay an extra $2 when you rent a bike, and you get a code to key in on a locker full of helmets. When you're done with the helmet later on, you drop the helmet off at the locker.

Having said all that, the only reason this helmet rental system exists is because of Seattle's mandatory bike helmet law, which should be repealed as it's a damper on all bike ridership.

If you need to carry a helmet (or want a great helmet that fits in a small space), try Hövding

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B6vding

http://www.hovding.com

My coworker has one, looked pretty great, and probably a worthy purchase.

The Melbourne bikes have a hook to attach a helmet: http://www.curriqui.es/imagenes_comunes/btt/Cascos_gratuitos...

It would be interesting to see some data on usage levels, system operating costs and retail prices for comparisons across different bike-share systems around the world.

The only data I found from a quick search was a 2012 comparison of the retail prices[0].

[0] http://www.wnyc.org/story/284552-what-bike-share-costs-a-com...

Timeline seems to be missing Vienna, which tried it as early as 2001 and had problems with theft. The second iteration (2004 or so?) was a great success.

In 1993, there was an exciting weekend in Cambridge (UK) when there were freely available white-painted bikes all over the city. In a day or so they had all disappeared.

http://www.iankitching.me.uk/history/cam/old/green-bike.html

Cambridge is a really bike friendly city but the bike theft level is beyond silly. That's the next problem to solve.

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