[sustran] Free Bike Programs

[Todd Litman]

At 11:10 AM 8/2/99 +0800, you wrote:
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>-- -- -- -- CAR BUSTERS BULLETIN -- -- --
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>ANY EXPERIENCES WITH FREE BIKE PROGRAMMES?
>    Issue 6 is also going to contain an article on free bike
>programmes, where bikes are left at various points around a city for
>people to use and return to a different point. If you have any
>experiences of a free bike programme, please contribute a paragraph or
>two on your personal experience - how the programme works in your
>city, what works well, what needs improvement, and related thoughts.
>Deadline August 15.

A volunteer group here in the city of Victoria, British Columbia operates a
community bike program. They collect donated bikes, fix them up, paint them
blue, and leave them around the city for anybody to use. Although I think
that their intentions are great, I am unimpressed with the outcome. The
bikes tend to be trashed (one was thrown up into a tree near out home) and
abused, and so they don't look very safe to use. 

Despite a considerable amount of work that's gone into the program I don't
see people riding them very frequently, except for teenagers on a lark. I
doubt that they have reduced vehicle travel at all. Rather than making
bicycling a more legitmate form of transportation, they seem to reinforce
the sense that bicycles are toys, with little value, unworthy of respect.

I would much rather see donated bikes given to specific individuals who
could not otherwise afford a bicycle. This would insure that they are
available to people who really need them, and that they are well taken care
of. That is what a group in Olympia, Washington did: bikes were fixed up
and donated to low-income households through a social services agency,
along with helmets and instructions. It was a very effective program. 

An alternative would be to donate the bikes to a specific organization
(such as the local collage rec center or a downtown storefront
organization) that could loan or rent them for a nominal fee (such as $2 a
day), as a way to make them available to responsible users.

A final note: Here in North Amercia, many people have unused old bicycles
around their house that they happily donate to such a program. It makes
them feel virtuous. If you advertise that you are collecting such bicycles
you can easily be overwhelmed by the quantity of donations, but more than
half of what you get will be worthless: low quality bicycles with broken
components, some requiring outdated that parts are no longer available. A
few with bent frames. Some will be unsuitable, such as narrow tire racing
bikes. To avoid a considerable amount of wasted energy, excess storage
requirements and trips to the garbage dump be very specific and strict
about what types of bicycles you accept. Be prepared to do a lot of work to
get them into operating shape, and have a system for maintaining them as
needed.


Sincerely,

Todd Litman, Director
Victoria Transport Policy Institute
"Efficiency - Equity - Clarity"
1250 Rudlin Street
Victoria, BC, V8V 3R7, Canada
Phone & Fax: 250-360-1560
E-mail:  litman at islandnet.com
Website: http://www.islandnet.com/~litman