AFRICA: Bike-Share Systems Already Thrive
One winter morning in central Cape Town, despite the gale force wind and the threat of rain, Jacques Sibomana, who was going to be ‘up and down the city all day’, decided he’d rather cycle than brace against the wind on foot.
'I went to hire a bicycle but I couldn’t because I didn't have a credit card,' he says. 'The only option was for me to put up a deposit of 2,000 rands (about 290 dollars), which didn't make sense, but the vendor wanted insurance.'
Cape Town is one of the growing number of cities worldwide that is considering ‘bike-share’, a local authority-owned bicycle transport system aimed at short-term trips around the city. There are already more than 130 city bike-share systems worldwide, from the most famous, Velib in Paris, to the most recent, Barclays (Boris’ Bikes) in London, and the largest, Hangzhou, in China.
Bicycle sharing systems, also known as public bike schemes, are designed for quick urban trips and to complement public transport, enabling people to complete the last few kilometres of a journey by bike rather than on foot.
Unlike with leisure bicycle rentals, users toting smart cards can pick up a bicycle at one location (every 300 metres or so) and drop it off at another. The systems offer fast and easy access, with no large deposits, documentation or attendants. Pricing systems are geared toward short commuter trips. Often such systems are government subsided, or funded through advertising revenue. They’re slick, stylish, and fully automated — with touch-screen maps, GPS-based route planners and sophisticated tracking devices.
'These systems are significant public transport projects in their own right, as well as important urban economic development, urban quality, climate change and public health interventions,' says Bradley Schroeder, ITDP (Institute for Transport Development Policy) bike-share technical expert.
Yet the concept has proven to be a tough sell in developing countries. In Cape Town a number of pilot projects have stalled at business plan phase.
Carlos Felipe Pardo, a psychologist from Bogota, Colombia, who studies transport behaviour, is not surprised that investors hesitate before taking the plunge in the global south. The risk of theft and vandalism is relatively high, even in high-tech systems such as Velib.
In countries where theft is significantly more common, and where there are few secure bicycle lock-up facilities, this risk is even greater. Add to this minimal bicycle infrastructure, the complicating factor of mandatory helmets (in South Africa) and a lack of data about potential user numbers, and it’s not uncritically a recipe for success, he says.
Although the advent of bike-share might change the purpose and profile of bicycle users, 'there is the risk of alienating poorer people who cannot afford the deposit or do not have a credit card,' Pardo says. 'And it would be inequitable and unethical for a public service to exclude part of the population on this basis.'
For this reason, systems proposed in African and Indian cities, for example, are low-tech, and designed to create jobs, with guards, lock-and-key and no-pre-registration.
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service