Hilary Henegar at Modo links to this news from CityLab:
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The Most Persuasive Evidence Yet that Bike-Share Serves as Public Transit
… a new research study—first referenced here by former D.C. and Chicago transportation chief Gabe Klein—offers the most persuasive evidence yet that bike-share serves as a genuine form of public transportation. …
Berkeley researchers Elliot Martin and Susan Shaheen report the findings in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Transport Geography:
The denser the urban environment (particularly for rail), the more bikesharing provides new connections that substitute for existing ones. The less dense the environment, the more bikesharing establishes new connections to the existing public transit system. …
For short trips in dense settings, bike-share just makes more sense than waiting for the subway—it’s “substitutive of public transit,” in the words of Martin and Shaheen. For longer trips from the outskirts, bike-share access might act as a nudge out of a car—it’s “complementary to public transit.” The authors conclude:
In all cases, as demonstrated by its remarkable ability to attract modal share in North America, public bikesharing appears to be improving urban mobility and lowering dependency on automobile travel.
Hilary also wonders: What’s up with Vancouver’s bikeshare proposal, post-Bixi?
bike sharing is an unprofitable niche for a minority of users to begin with, and will surely fail with a bike helmet law in place.
I don’t understand how bikesharing is a viable substitute for or complement to public transit in a city that rains six months a year. Do the bike shares come with rain gear rental as well? Bike share are great for tourists visiting downtown. Long term, I fail to see how they would do anything to solve congestion.