(Editor’s note: our brilliant design columnist has been struck down with some awful form of plague, and has been sent to bed with a mustard plaster and a vat of chicken soup. So in the style of old summer re-runs, we present “Classic Dodson,” casting into the dark backward and abysm of time for a post that’s rather timely, given that our friend Chris Merriam was recently awarded an OSI Community Fellowship to expand the work of Bikemore in Baltimore.)
The U.S. has long fallen behind other countries in public transit options and providing alternatives to driving. Small strides are being made in the two-wheeled direction, however, with Alison Cohen’s bike sharing upstart Alta Bicycle Share, based out of (where else?) Portland, Oregon. Alta has launched bike rental operations in Washington, D.C. and Boston, among other cities, and will put 10,000 bikes on the streets of New York this summer.
The setup works like this: borrowers unlock a bike from a docking station scattered throughout the city by inserting a prepaid keycard and return the bike to any other docking station at trip’s end. Annual, monthly, 3-day or a 24-hour subscription can be purchased. After paying for a membership, the first 30 minutes of riding is free, with additional costs incurring after that. Pricing can get a little tricky, though, and can be cost prohibitive for tourists or those without time to wait for a keycard in the mail.
I looked for information on strides made towards bike sharing programs in Baltimore and didn’t get very far. In November 2011 there were plans for the city to partner with B-cycle to put 300 bikes on Baltimore streets by fall 2012. Like Alta’s partnership with NYC, B-cycle was to be privately funded and use no public subsidies. (Citibank and MasterCard provided $41 million and $6.5 million dollars to fund the NYC fleet, respectively.) I hope they are still moving forward with this plan as I haven’t seen a fancy bike fleet yet.
While Alta and similar biking initiatives are forward thinking in their attempts to alleviate traffic congestion and promote a greener transportation option, too often these types of initiatives ostracize those who most likely do not have access to a car or even a debit or credit card to pay the associated fees. These are the people that really need access to affordable transportation—to get to work, to have access to healthy food and exercise, to tend to family matters, to have options. Furthermore, the digital divide prevents the poor from even knowing such programs exist.
Baltimore has taken recent initiatives to provide more transportation outlets to city dwellers. The free Charm City Circulator operates three routes connecting popular points downtown. Zipcar car-sharing stations have populated the city, but are mostly concentrated downtown and near universities, ie. near middle-class professionals and internet-savvy students. As with bike rentals, these transport hubs will have to move beyond the Inner Harbor and Mount Vernon areas to offer their services to the true transportation deserts in the city.
A more viable solution might be to provide more affordable bikes to those in need. Velocipede Bike Project is a great resource to get moving on two wheels on the cheap. And (surprise!) international designers are already on top of affordable solutions. Using nine dollars worth of materials, bicycle enthusiast Izhar Gafni has created a fully functioning, water-resistant bicycle, made, from seat to spokes, entirely of recycled cardboard. What if these cardboard bikes were for sale at light rail stations?
Not that smaller scale car-sharing services don’t exist among the poor. I’m sure you’ve seen someone on the side of the road hacking—shaking their forefinger, gesturing for a ride. (I’ve only seen this in Baltimore.) Perhaps there is an opportunity for a social designer to tap into this informal vehicle-sharing system and make it more efficient and available on a larger scale.
From my experience, people who want to commute by bike or cycle as part of a green, healthy lifestyle already own a bike and incorporate cycling into their daily routines as much as they can. Bike sharing might be a great alternative to driving, but only for a select few who know their whereabouts and have the liberty to choose. Sure, an awareness campaign would be a good place to start, but I think further design thinking needs to be employed to change behaviors and update the Baltimore transportation landscape. We need to include those on the other side of MLK and Guilford in our efforts. As social designers we need to seek beyond the traditional boundaries of two-dimensions and create multifaceted ideas that promote positive change.
