San Francisco Bike Sharing Programs
San Francisco is closer to offering visitors and residents a bike-sharing program to help ease traffic congestion and promote a healthy lifestyle through exercise. Some European cities have a sponsored program in which several bikes are provided for people to share. Last year, Paris had provided over 10,000 bicycles at several stations in hopes that people will jump on this bandwagon and will grow in size in years to come.
There have been plans in the work to propose a city contract with Clear Channel Outdoor Inc. to give the company the advertising rights in the bike-sharing program. In Paris, there are several bike racks set up hundreds of feet of each other. An inexpensive rental rate for the bicycles usually runs about $41 a year. Parisians have bought more than a hundred thousand annual passes and the bikes have become a popular means of transportation.
With severe auto congestion, high gas prices and the rise of air pollution, San Francisco residents want city hall to make this happen. The easier it is to use a bicycle will result in more people using them. Many more people will think twice about getting into their cars to drive a couple blocks away.
The bicycles in Paris are embedded with an electronic tracking device and a computer system, which monitors the inventory of bikes at the stations. The company that was responsible in investing in this program in Paris is JC Decaux. They paid the money to start up the program and have exclusive rights to over 1,500 billboards across town.
The proposed San Francisco contract with Clear Channel, C.C. would pay the MTA over $300 million over a span of twenty years and would fund and keep up the bike sharing program. Clear Channel has all advertising rights.
The things that are to be worked out is the details how many bicycles will be used, what sort of technology will be involved, what sort of fees will be included, and liability issues.
San Francisco isn’t the only city in the United States that is willing to start a bike-sharing program. Washington D.C., Portland, New York, and Chicago have all shown interest in this program.