Bike share is coming to Eugene

I wrote about a bike share system that is set to launch in Eugene this fall. My timing is bad — I will have graduated by then.

By: Josie Fey

A new bike share system is coming to Eugene in October 2017.

Back in March 2015 the Oregon Transportation Commission approved a Connect Oregon grant of $909,066 for the city of Eugene to start a bike share program. Reed Dunbar, a transportation planner for the City of Eugene said that since then, through a combined effort of community partners – Lane Transit District, the City of Eugene and the University of Oregon, a vendor and an operator for the system were chosen in a unanimous decision, and they are in contract negotiations now.

“We are contractually obligated to have something on the ground by October 2017,” Dunbar said. He added that the initial installment is for 20 stations and 200 bikes, strategically placed throughout the city and on the University of Oregon campus.

According to a bike share feasibility study published in June 2014 by the Toole Design Group at the request of the Lane Transit District and the City of Eugene, “Bike share is an innovative transportation program, whereby system subscribers have access to public bicycles through self-service kiosk locations throughout the community.”

The feasibility study lists some of the benefits of bike share, including improvement of mental and physical health for riders, expansion of existing transit services, and the reduction of carbon footprint.

Another benefit the study included was potentially reducing individual transportation costs for residents. Dunbar said the operating company would coordinate pricing structure, but that it would include a service fee – like other public transit options.

He said the vendor provides equipment like bikes, stations and kiosks, while the operator will be in charge of running and maintaining the system.

Because the contracts are still in negotiation, he could not yet give specifics about the companies that had been chosen, but did say that the operator was a non-profit, by choice. “Because we’re putting so much public money into it we wanted it to be a very public and equitable system, to the degree that we can deliver that, because bike share is still a business.” He added, “We can’t throw in a lot of subsidy but we can try to make it an attractive transportation option for people. We thought that a nonprofit that has representatives from the city, LTD and the university would be more faithful to that mission than an operator who is motivated by profit.”

According to the feasibility study, “The system will cost approximately $2.6 million to operate for the first five years. User revenues are expected to cover approximately $1.4 million (or 54 percent) of the operating expenses. The remaining $1.2 million could come from sponsorship or advertising on the stations and bikes, direct contributions from the University of Oregon and other private interests, and local public funding.”

The sponsorship packages can provide interesting marketing opportunities. Dunbar said there are a variety of sponsorship levels, from presenting sponsors who can purchase a part of the bike on which to place an ad, to a title sponsor who gets full naming rights. “Bike share is unique in that you can basically sell every component of the bike to a different entity,” he said. “You could sell the fenders to a local café or you could sell the basket to the local hospital.”

Though bike share is relatively new, other cities’ experiments with it provide helpful guidance. Boulder, Colorado, a community similar in size to Eugene, that also has an active population and a state university, was one of the first cities to implement a bike share system, back in 2013.

Kevin Bell is the marketing and communications director for Boulder B-Cycle, a nonprofit bike sharing system that’s part of a network of city bike sharing outfits contracting with B-cycle – an LLC owned by Trek Corporation, an equipment contractor based in Waterloo, Wisconsin. Bell started working with the company in 2013. “When I joined Boulder, most of the programs on the ground now didn’t exist,” he said.

Bell said Boulder struggled in the beginning with branding the system as a commuter program rather than a recreational tool. “When our program launched, most of the stations were in areas that were frequented by visitors of Boulder, so I think the first impression was that we were more of a visitor amenity rather than a transportation option for locals,” he said. “So we’ve been swimming upstream to some degree in terms of changing people’s perceptions of how bike sharing can be used by locals, by adding more stations near where people live and work and study in Boulder, and where they tend to go.”

According to Dunbar, Eugene shouldn’t have the same problems. “We want to do this right from the outset. We want to make sure it’s something that people enjoy, and we want it to be an effective transportation option.”