All right, here’s the new side-of-the-bus ad from our SFMTA, the slowest large transit agency in American history (And I’m srsly on that one. Can you name me one slower? OK then.)
“Do You Know What You’re Getting Into?”
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By the numbers:
1. Trained drivers with extensive training [And people say bloggers talk funny!]
2. Proper insurance [A low blow! But yes, SFMTA, you have a valid point here.]
3. Your support of local San Francisco drivers. [Some yes, some not]
4. Driver background checks. [Meh.]
5. Safety and meter inspection [Meh.]
6. Formal process for dispute resolution [Meh.]
OK, now how old are you, SFMTA? Not too old but old enough to have been in charge of this:
Was this SFMTA-licensed driver trained with extensive training to, IDK, investigate fires before people die?
Apparently not. How many fares have Lyft drivers killed?
Speaking of which, what about the sad case of Julie Christine Day, who was last seen alive leaving the Bubble Lounge on Montgomery?
One of your vaunted, extensively-trained, fully licensed and insured drivers started up his fully-inspected meter and then immediately set about murdering his fare, right, SFMTA?
So, what the Hell?
All right, SFMTA, you might have some good points about Lyft and Sidecar and Uber (look for the orange rear-view window cozies, I’m srsly) and the illegal limos and the out-of-town taxi drivers making illegal pickups in the 415.
But you are biased by your 50% tax on taxi medallions, among other things.
So let’s mark this effort as yet another failed initiative from the SFMTA.
No, I don’t want your number No, I don’t wanna give you mine, and No, I don’t wanna meet you nowhere No, I don’t want none of your time, and
No, I don’t want no scrub A scrub is a guy that can’t get no love from me Hanging out the passenger side Of his best friend’s ride Trying to holla at me I don’t want no scrub A scrub is a guy that can’t get no love from me Hanging out the passenger side Of his best friend’s ride Trying to holla at me
But a scrub’s checkin’ me but his game is kinda weak And I know that he cannot approach me ‘Cause I’m lookin like class and he’s looking like trash Can’t get wit a deadbeat ass
Isn’t this a lot cheaper, you know, per bike, than the SFMTA’s / BAAQMD’s expensive bike sharing scheme?
Hell yes. Plus, you, Fellow San Franciscan, end up with a bicycle of your own.
Hey, where’s my almost-free Dahon bike, SFMTA?
You know who’s excited about Pasadena already? Dahon Girl 2009, that’s who:
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Oh, what’s that, giving away bicycles ala Santa Monica is NOT a jobs program? Because most of the money would necessarily go into bikes instead of salaries and benefits and pensions?
And the SFMTA is really an employment agency instead of the (very slow, slowest in America) transit agency it claims to be?
Oh, so I guess, for that reason, we won’t be getting a Pasadena-style program up here in the 415.
‘Cause I’ll tell you, SF’s new bikeshare program is of zero interest to me, as a supposed user. And I’ll tell you, most of the money for San Francisco’s bike share program will end up paying the employees instead of paying for the large, heavy, expensive, undesirable equipment for the program.
Last time I checked. the San Francisco Fire Department spends 91% of its budget on salaries / related expenses and just 9% on equipment. Will our bike share program end up with that kind of percentage after it ends? We’ll see.
Of course, when you’re giving away or heavily subsidizing a bike program as Pasadena is doing, you’re going to run into corruption and fraud type of problems.
*And vandalism. Don’t forget about theft and vandalism. Oh, you have the GPS to fight theft? Guess what, it’s sending out its signal from, say, underneath Pier 2. Who’s going to fish it out? We’ll see.
**One big diff will be that any issues anyone has about the bike share program will be met with a pitch for more money. More and more and more money.
It’s new. It’s the SFO FlyCycle SoBi program from Social Bicycles.
Here are some of the bikes parked at SFO these days…
…and here is a short video explaining the program. Note the drive shaft instead of a chain:
I’ll tell you, what Social Bicycles calls a headlight and a taillight aren’t all that bright.
And I’ll tell you, the helmet issue goes unaddressed.
And I’ll tell you, the reservation system looks cumbersome / unnecessary.
And how much this program costs us and how much it gets used, that’s also a mystery.
These bikes would get thrashed in San Francisco proper, say parked at 6th and Market, but they appear to be pretty safe in the San Francisco part of San Mateo County.
Meet the Team:
Ryan Rzepecki, CEO
Ryan has a B.S. in Marketing from Penn State University and a Masters in Urban Planning from Hunter College. The bicycle has been his primary mode of transportation for the last four years, and bicycle advocacy has been both his passion and profession. Prior to developing SoBi, Ryan worked for the NYC Department of Transportation in the bicycle program. At the DOT, he sited bike racks, edited the bike map, conducted field research on bike facilities, and organized cycling promotions.
Nick Foley, Product Design
Nick is a designer and bike mechanic who loves how bicycles make life more efficient. He studied industrial design at Pratt Institute where he experimented with bicycles that were optimized for ‘non-cyclist’ commuters. Nick gets excited about using design to make urban infrastructure more sustainable, and creating objects that return a sense of wonder to everyday activities.
Marcin Pyla, Software Development
Marcin has 10 years of experience building websites, applications, and start-ups. He is currently founder and CEO of Leftbrain where he manages the 5 developers working for Social Bicycles. He oversees all software development including embedded Linux, Ruby on Rails, iOS, and Android.
Justin Willey, Business Development
Justin has a B.S. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from UC Berkeley. In 2009, he received a number of grants to establish a bike share and bicycle shop at UC Berkeley. Justin has since been involved in planning, designing, implementing, and managing bike share systems around the country. Justin is excited by the opportunity to transform the urban landscape through bicycles.
Patrick T. Hoffman, Project Management
Patrick is a LEED AP and has a Bachelor of Architecture from Drexel University in Philadelphia and a M.S. in Urban Planning from Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an experienced Project Manager and has managed complex design, construction, research and product development projects involving public and private partners. Patrick is passionate about empowering people to create dynamic and vibrant communities.
Matt Kochman… served as Uber’s founding general manager in New York before he left last year. Kochman left Uber to do consulting for transportation brands and startups, fed up with Uber’s irreverent attitude toward regulators. “Discounting the rules and regulations as a whole, just because you want to launch a product and you have a certain vision for things, that’s just irresponsible,” Kochman said.
*If you don’t want to “kick a man when he is down” then why go to the shutdown in the first place? Your bit is like vanilla ice cream without the vanilla…
From left to right: Michael Uribe, General Manager, Zipcar San Francisco; Jane Kim, District 6 Supervisor; Dan Grossman, Regional Vice President, West Coast, Zipcar:
Via ZipCar]
Here are the people who will greet you when you step into the new, bigger home office for ZipCar in San Francisco:
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It’s like a clubhouse, sort of.
All the deets:
“Newly Expanded San Francisco Zipcar Office Debuts
District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim and local Zipsters Helped Welcome Zipcar to its New Space
SAN FRANCISCO, July 22, 2011 - Zipcar, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZIP), the world’s leading car sharing network, announced the grand opening of its newly expanded San Francisco office, located at 191 2nd Street, South of Market. Zipcar celebrated the opening with a Ribbon Cutting ceremony with special guest District 6 Supervisor Jane Kim, along withan event for local-area members, who the company calls “Zipsters,” featuring a raffle and complimentary treats from Jamba Juice and the local Rib Whip food truck.
The new office is a result of Zipcar’s growing success in the San Francisco area and provides the city the opportunity to further reduce congestion, emissions and parking demand. Zipcar first began operations in San Francisco in 2005, with a fleet of 29 vehicles in three neighborhoods. Over the past six years, the company has grown to offer nearly 1,000 vehicles in over 33 neighborhoods throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, making San Francisco one of Zipcar’s most popular markets in the nation.
“We have an extremely enthusiastic base of Zipsters here in San Francisco, and I want to thank our members for their loyalty and for helping us grow to where we are today,” said Michal Uribe, general manager, Zipcar San Francisco. “With the opening of our newly expanded office and the addition of new cars this summer, we’re pleased to now offer even more convenient car sharing options to residents, college students and businesses in the Bay Area. Zipcar’s long-term vision is a world where car-sharing members outnumber car owners in cities around the world, and our growth in San Francisco is helping bring us closer to this vision every day.”
Zipcar provides a viable alternative to car ownership, making it an important component of a sustainable transportation network in San Francisco. National studies have shown that each shared Zipcar takes 15 privately owned vehicles off the road and that vehicle miles traveled per driver is reduced almost 50 percent when car owners switch to car sharing. In addition, a recent Zipcar survey revealed that Zipcar members reported a nearly 50 percent increase in the use of public transit after becoming members – in addition to a 10 percent increase in cycling and 26 percent increase in walking – all of which help to reduce congestion, mitigate traffic and parking issues, and help reduce the city’s overall carbon footprint.
About Zipcar
Zipcar is the world’s leading car sharing network with more than 575,000 members and more than 8,000 vehicles in urban areas and college campuses throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Zipcar offers more than 30 makes and models of self-service vehicles by the hour or day to residents and businesses looking for an alternative to the high costs and hassles of owning a car. More information is available at www.zipcar.com.
I guess they have the money now and they’re working on figuring out who’s going to run the thing.
Appears as if the SFMTA has given up on a giant Parisian Velib-style program with 5000 bikes strewn all over town – they’re starting small. Regardless, some of this free advice still applies.
The deets:
“…the pilot service area will be centered in San Francisco’s employment- and transit-rich Downtown/SOMA corridor between the Financial District, Market Street and the Transbay and Caltrain terminals. This area is notably flat, has the densest bikeway network coverage in San Francisco and enjoys the highest levels of cycling, yet those who commute by transit from cities to the east and south encounter difficulties bringing a bicycle with them on BART or Caltrain.”
“Heath Maddox, senior planner for the Livable Streets Subdivision of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), says the defining characteristics of the service they’ve outlined in an RFP draft is that the bike system be solar-powered with no need for external AC power and no requirement for excavation that would turn the installation process into a construction project.”
Remember, sharing is caring.
All the deets:
“The map of the pilot service area presents northeast San Francisco. The highlighted area in the map is the bicycle sharing pilot service area bound by South Van Ness Avenue and the Ferry Terminal along Market Street. To the north, the service area boundary includes the Federal Building at Turk Street, Union Square at Post Street, the Broadway and Columbus Avenue intersection, and The Embarcadero at Sansome Street. To the south, the highlighted service area includes the Embarcadero to Mission Bay, Townsend Street and Concourse Exhibition Center.”
Bike sharing is coming to San Francisco! A regional pilot program led by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) in partnership with the SFMTA will bring approximately 50bike share stations and 500 bikes to San Francisco’s downtown core beginning in spring 2012. The SFMTA is working with a regional team to implement this pilot along the Caltrain corridor in San Francisco, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Redwood City and San Jose and shown in this Regional Bike Sharing System map. The project is funded through a combination of local, regional and federal grants with major funding coming from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Innovative Bay Area Climate Initiatives Grant Program (BACI).
What is bike sharing?
Similar to car sharing, bicycle sharing is a term used to describe a membership-based system of short-term bicycle rental. Members can check a bicycle out from a network of automated bicycle stations, ride to their destination, and return the bicycle to a different station. Bicycle sharing is enjoying a global explosion in growth with the development of purpose-built bicycles and stations that employ high tech features like smartcards, solar power, and wireless internet and GPS technologies.
Who is involved with launching the San Francisco bike sharing system?
The BAAQMD is the overall regional project lead, coordinating the planning and implementation efforts of the local partners: the City and County of San Francisco, the Cities of San Jose, Mountain View and Palo Alto in Santa Clara County and the City of Redwood City in San Mateo County. The SFMTA is leading the project in San Francisco, and we are working in cooperation with our City and County partners, including the Planning Department, Department of Public Works, San Francisco Recreation and Park Department and the Port of San Francisco. The regional partners will be selecting a contractor in fall 2011 to install, operate, and manage the system.
Where will bike sharing be located in San Francisco?
As the San Francisco Bicycle Sharing Pilot Service Area map (PDF) presents, in San Francisco, the pilot service area will be centered in San Francisco’s employment- and transit-rich Downtown/SOMA corridor between the Financial District, Market Street and the Transbay and Caltrain terminals. This area is notably flat, has the densest bikeway network coverage in San Francisco and enjoys the highest levels of cycling, yet those who commute by transit from cities to the east and south encounter difficulties bringing a bicycle with them on BART or Caltrain. Much of San Francisco’s densely urbanized northeastern quadrant is similarly well-suited to bicycle sharing.
When will bike sharing launch in San Francisco?
The regional partners will be selecting a vendor to install, operate, and manage the bike sharing system in 2011 with the goal of a system launch in Spring/Summer 2012!
Further Information
If you have any questions, comments or feedback about bike sharing, contact the SFMTA at sustainable.streets@sfmta.com.
Do you know what it’s like to ride a 50-pound plus bike in SF in the rain? I do, I remember from just yesterday. But you, you ought to hit Civic Center today and tomorrow to see all the models competing to become a part of your San Francisco Bike Share Program. Check it:
So Bixi is just like the Parisian Velib program except the Bixi bikes aren’t as heavy, which is a good thing. But the Bixis are still heavy though. And if you happen to be six foot one and a ton of fun, you’ll find that the frame is strong enough but that the seatpost doesn’t go up high enough. Otherwise the whole program is as you would expect.
In France, they incentivize people to drop the bikes off at the tops of hills. If a program like this ever gets off the ground in San Francisco, what would it take to deal with stations at the tops of our mini-mountains?
If you want to make a system like this work in San Francisco, you’d need a subsidy from the government, the way that MUNI and BART and Golden Gate ferries get subsidies.
And where will people get the helmets they’ll need? Whoops. (In gay Paris, they take a c’est la vie approach to matters like this.)
All in all, I’d rather have a regular bike and a U-lock than a Bixi program membership. But if you can’t find a cab or you just missed your bus, you might like having the option of a short-term bike rental.
A one-day opportunity for the public to ride bikes from a bike share system. Bike sharing allows people to pick up a bike from one station, travel to their destination and return the bike to any other station in a network. City CarShare will be conducting a survey among participants to get their feedback on the concept, the equipment and their level of support for bike sharing in San Francisco.
WHEN:
Sunday, August 2, 10 am- 3:30 pm
WHERE:
Golden Gate Park, (just inside the car-free Sunday road closure on JFK Drive at Conservatory Drive East)
WHY:
To allow the public to test-ride the bikes and learn more about this eco-friendly mode of urban transportation. Through this demonstration project, the sponsors hope to encourage awareness and increased civic conversation about Bike Sharing for San Francisco as having the potential to build a greener city while encouraging healthy living.
SPONSORS:
City CarShare, SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), BIXI (of Montreal)
