CAMPANA BROTHERS: CONCEPTS
NY DESIGN WEEK 2013 - WANTED DESIGN
NY DESIGN WEEK 2013 - SATELLITE SHOWS
NY DESIGN WEEK 2013 - ICFF
Yesterday, the transportation world was abuzz with the news that New York City had finally selected Alta Bike Share for the city's forthcoming bike share program. The Portland, Oregon transit company runs similar programs in Boston and Washington, D.C., which have 61 and 110 stations respectively; the NYC program will be an order of magnitude greater in scale, with 600 self-service, solar-powered stations for 10,000 bikes—which is certainly ambitious, but not even close to Hangzhou's 50,000 bike system. (According to Wikipedia, there are currently 468 subway stations in New York.)
Strange, I was at that very intersection this morning and I didn't see any bike share...
At launch, which is currently set for summer 2012, the program will extend from 79th Street in Manhattan down to Park Slope and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn (no definite borders given). Naturally, "options for additional stations in other boroughs are also being explored." The fee will be "under $100" annually for 24/7/365 access to bicycles in the system; trips longer than 30-45 minutes will incur minor fees as well.
If these details seem a bit vague, it's largely because the bike share program is still a work in progress, pending input from local communities, user testing, etc. The official website—where New Yorkers can suggest station locations, whether or not they're within the initial range—is nyc.gov/bikeshare. (Streetsblog reports that in the past 24 hours, since the site went live, "people have suggested more than 3,200 station sites and submitted more than 13,000 up or down votes on them.")
Promo video after the jump:
The City's Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn, who was recently the subject of a lengthy profile in the Observer, made the announcement yesterday:
Read the press release here (PDF). For a second opinion, The New York Times has a slightly more pragmatic, if not outright pessimistic take on the bike share program.
via Streetsblog, who also have more details about the business end of things.
Comments
We have had this system in Oslo, Norway for some time now, its only around 8 GBP a year which is super affordable . Here it works extremely well but it is a small city, be interesting to see how it works on such a large scale.
You might be interested to know the designer of this very good system: http://www.dallairedesign.com/flash/index.html
The original concept is from Montreal, Canada and it's call Bixi.
And like Marc said, the designer is Michel Dallaire.
FYI , this entire program has been a complete flop in Montreal
I'm certainly hoping for success with the NYC Bike Share. It could be a great thing for NYC! Hopefully it is embraced by everyone.
Alex is totally wrong, it's a resounding success!
Core77 a site devoted to design and you never wrote a word about the exceptional design of this system!
It's interesting to know that it's a design competition involving several teams comprised of a design agency, a bike manufacturer and a engineering agency that was the start point of this product.
It's now used in Toronto, Ottawa, London, Melbourne, Boston, Washington, Minneapolis, Chattanooga, New-York and soon Chicago.
You could get a nice article with an interview with the industrial designer: http://www.dallairedesign.com/