[sustran] Paying for your City Bike

[eric.britton]

It occurred to me that this from the in-process Greening of Paris – Vol 1 Vélib’ draft might also be of use in the context of this latest round of “discussions” about Vélib’ and $$$. Comments as always, etc. Eric Britton


 


3.7       Paying for your “Vélib’”


 

Lyons, Paris and other cities that have  cut deals with advertizing companies who are today supplying them with high quality city bike systems against contractual access to public space have made an enormous contribution to the environment and life quality in their cities. But as has been seen, these are not the only ways to fund such a project.

 

At the very least the first imperative is to learn from their  experience (see above) and if you decide to go the street advertisement route, the best thing we can recommend is for you to create two transparent separate contracts for the two very different ends of the deal.  It is my view that there can be no argument against this.

 

Then there is the matter of the city paying for it, as it does for at least a portion of public transport costs and just about all of the cost involved in building and maintaining the road system and all the rest that supports it.  Certainly the relatively  low levels of cost involved for these projects relative to traditional investments in the sector should make this a relatively easy call. 

 

The key of course will be to have a firm grasp of not only the costs but also of the benefits to the city and its citizens.  To get a handle on this, it should be possible in most cases to make some simple calculations drawing on available data and rule of thumb estimates for your city, so that you at least have a handle on the dimensions involved.

 

Let me make a quick and dirty first calculation of how that might work based on a couple of conceptual figures. If, for example, only 1% of the daily trips of the full system in Paris (estimates to be on the order of 200,000-plus) were direct substitutes for taking say my car, and if we rough-guess  the global external cost figure of a 3 km trip made during the day from cold start-up at  € 1.50, the net annual benefit to the city would be something on the order of € 2 million.  [1]

 

But of course any such calculation would do well to go far beyond this very rough first step, because there are enormous other benefits to the community as will be clear. But for now let me leave you with the thought that if indeed you can come up with convincing numbers for these benefits, then this starts to make it clear that there may be other ways and other reasons for paying for this terrific public service.

 

Certainly the bottom line of this  is that you will do well to look into other financing routes before you make your final decision.

 


 


 


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[1] We have invited a number of international colleagues to have a close look at this first crude cut, and will be factoring back into this section their additional information and refinements.