ATTACHMENT 2

COMMUNITY BIKE PROGRAMS

The Carrboro Planning Department provided the following research on community bike programs. Different models of community bike programs have been tried in the United States and overseas. These models include:

• Fix and release:  Some community bike programs have focused on fixing up a number of bikes and simply placing them out into the community—unlocked and unmonitored—for anyone to use.  Unfortunately, these programs have not worked well, perhaps due to the lack of individual accountability, and the bikes have quickly disappeared or fallen into disrepair.  Organizations in Portland, Oregon and Charlottesville, Virginia that sponsored failed “fix and release” programs.  Following these failures, the non-profit sponsoring organizations changed their focus to fixing up bikes and distributing them to youths and adults in the community who need a bicycle.  In Portland, for instance, the Community Cycling Center's Create a Commuter (CAC) program provides low-income adults with fully-outfitted commuter bicycles and five hours of training on safe bicycle commuting.  In Charlottesville, the Community Bikes program provides a bicycle repair shop where youths and adults can learn about bike maintenance and earn a bike by helping to fix one up.
• Hub program:  Another model involves setting up a “hub” program where users would check out a bicycle from a human attendant at a hub.  The hubs are usually at businesses, shops, churches, youth centers, bike shops, libraries, etc.  Users typically must register and get a program identification card, and then visit any of the designated hubs around the community to sign out a bicycle. These programs work like a lending library for bikes and have been more successful because there is individual accountability.  A hub program which appears to be successful has been developed in Toronto by the Community Bicycle Network.  (A hub program in Minneapolis-St. Paul is now defunct and has morphed into a non-profit community bicycle repair, retail, and education program.)  In order to be successful, the research indicates that there needs to be community businesses willing to donate space for a hub and to provide human attendants for the hub.
• Automated Computerized Check-out Program:  There are successful community bike programs in a few European cities that use automated computerized check-out systems.  These systems allow users to check-out a bicycle from an automated, unattended rack by using personal identification. These systems are expensive to set up and maintain.  Some of the European programs are operated for profit by outdoor advertising companies (principally Clear Channel), which implements the bike system in cities which agree to buy street furniture such as bus stop shelters on which ads can be placed. In a few German cities, the national train system also runs a bike check-out program.  Due to the cost of these systems (the German bikes cost 7 cents a minute or 15 Euros a day—about 18 dollars), the bicycles are not available to many who would benefit from access.