Travis K. Kircher is the editor of SelfService.org, a sister Web site, and is a regular contributor to Self-Service World. Kircher's most recent kiosk story explored airline mobile e-ticketing.
Washington, D.C., may be seen primarily as a focus of power and political intrigue, but some are keeping a close eye on the nation's capital for other, more fitness-related reasons. That's because the city has become a testing ground in the United States for one of the self-service industry's latest applications: the bicycle-rental kiosk. The "SmartBike" kiosks, which were created by outdoor advertising giant ClearChannel Communications Inc. and deployed by the Washington, D.C., District Department of Transportation, enable a cyclist to rent a bike with the swipe of a card.
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Martina Schmidt, president of ClearChannel's Adshel unit, says users can subscribe to the program at the SmartBike D.C. Web site for an annual fee of $40, paid via a debit or credit card. The Adshel unit oversaw the D.C. project. After enrolling, subscribers receive user cards in the mail. Once activated, the card can be used at any of the 10 SmartBike rental kiosks located throughout the Washington area. The kiosks consist of a row of single-file bikes — locked in place — and accessible via a card reader. The user swipes his card at the card reader and a bike is released. A rental can last up to three hours, at which time the bike should be returned to any of the 10 SmartBike stations located throughout the city.
Motivations Schmidt readily admits that it might sound odd that an outdoor-advertising company should be interested in getting into the bike-rental business, but she says it's not. In fact, outdoor-advertising specialists like ClearChannel are the ones deploying bike-rental kiosks, and the business model makes perfect sense. ClearChannel provides Washington with the kiosks in exchange for the right to advertise in certain public areas, such as on bus shelters. "That business model pays for all of the capital and the ongoing operating expense for the bike sharing program," she said. "Sometimes cities try to finance the program through federal grants or some other means, which are very limited. Often they only get approved for one year." Jim Sebastian, transportation planner for the D.C. Department of Transportation, was attracted to the concept while trying to come up with ideas to encourage city residents to exercise and cut back on vehicle emissions. When he saw the success of bike-rental programs in Paris (which recently saw more than 3.7 million rides in a 12-month period) he says he knew it was time to try something similar in the States. "We realized that most of the good (bike-rental programs) used automated kiosks," Sebastian said. "There were other ones that would simply just leave bikes around, and there would be no rack or kiosks necessarily — at least no high-tech ones. We looked at that, but in a big city, it's really hard to keep track of these bikes if you don't have some kind of automated system." M.I.A. Bikes But keeping track of rental bikes may be difficult, even with an automated system in place. According to a report filed by The New Zealand Herald, more than 3,000 self-service bicycles deployed in and around Paris between July 2007 and July 2008 by outdoor advertising giant JCDecaux were not returned. Some of those missing bikes were recovered in places as far away as Romania and Australia. Another 3,000 bikes were deliberately destroyed or damaged. JCDecaux did not respond to SelfService.org's requests for comment. Schmidt understands that the issue can be a sticky one for some deployers, but she says bike thieves do not get off scott-free, at least not with the ClearChannel solution. Anyone who does not turn in the bike within the three-hour rental period first gets a warning. If it happens a second time, the offender's user card is invalidated. And if the bike is not returned at all, the renter's credit (or debit) card is charged $550 — the estimated worth of the bike. "Yes, there are bikes that get lost, but we also retrieve some," she said. "Sometimes it's where people just don't return them for whatever reason, but they are found again; so that number eventually reduces over a period of time. But I think that's something that cannot be entirely avoided." The more the merrier One obstacle to success in the United States is the limited number of bike-rental stations currently available. Schmidt says the roughly 800 subscribers the service has in Washington only have access to 120 bikes available at 10 rental kiosks throughout the city. Compare that to more than 160,000 subscribers in Barcelona, which uses roughly 6,000 bikes at 450 stations. The lack of stations can be a problem, if the user can't find one near the location he's ultimately trying to reach. "That's where the number of stations really becomes important," says Eric Gilliland, executive director of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association and a strong supporter of the program. "The idea would be that you would pick one up from near where you live, ride it to near where you work, and drop it off so someone else could use it the rest of the day." Sebastian says he hopes the number of stations will change in the future. "We've only got 10, but we're working on more," he said. The future of transportation? For now, Schmidt says it looks like high gas prices and heightened environmental awareness may spell a bright future for self-service bike rental. Albuquerque, San Francisco and Phoenix are just some of the cities that have expressed interest in such a program, and Schmidt expects that number to grow as people continue to watch the rising cost of driving automobiles. Gilliland says biking is a no-brainer in the city of politics. "It's just faster — especially during rush hour when traffic is backing up," he said. "It's a lot easier to get around by bike. It's less expensive. You don't have to worry about paying for Metro, a bus, a cab or even your own car. Parking is never an issue, and it's great exercise at the same time."
