Born-again biker

Satisfied customer!

Here's a story about how bike-sharing is a terrific enhancement of public transport -- one that works for all kinds of people. I have a friend, Charlie Szabo, who was born and raised in Budapest, but now lives in Washington D.C. His main mode of local transport -- in Budapest and in D.C. -- has always been public transport.

However, in recent years he's been frustrated with the standard of D.C.'s system. It has no trams (although there's a plan afoot to reintroduce them) and the metro system is often broken down, unreliable or worse. Charlie says the escalators hardly ever work, which made me think of the escalator at the Margit hid HEV stop, but Charlie assures me it's a more pervasive, chronic problem there.

Charlie's deliverance from sub-par mass transit came in the form of a bike-sharing service. D.C. first launched bike sharing on an experimental basis back in 2008 with a token fleet of 120 bikes and 10 docking points. Despite the limited utility of the system, thousands of people jumped on board. Emboldened by the positive response, the neighbouring jurisdictions of Washington DC and Arlington, Virginia jointly launched a full-scale public bike system in 2010 called Capital Bikeshare ("CaBi" for short). The system now has 1,200 bikes and 140 stations around the metro area.

Until recently, Charlie has not been super active and he admitted to me that, aside from a pedal-powered beer run last summer at  Balaton, he had not ridden a bicycle in more than 20 years. But Capital Bikeshare proved too good to pass up. He lives pretty close to the centre of things and says the service is very convenient for his transport needs. Here's what he told me about it:

Happy to report that i just signed up for capitalbikeshare, and loving it!! It's been around for about a year, and new bike racks are popping up in DC and Arlington and Pentagon City just about every couple weeks. It costs $ 75 for a year and the first 30 minutes is free, but you get another 30 if you plug it in and take it out again. It really cuts down on bus fare and saves a lot of time and i might even get in shape for bikini season, too!! 

This is the most encouraging endorsement I've ever seen on bike sharing. Awesome!

Hooray for BuBi!

A name's been chosen for Budapest's new bike-sharing system: BuBi.

The name, pronounced the same as the English slang for a woman's breast (booby), was chosen from among 3,727 email submissions in a contest arranged by the system's designated operator, Parking kft.

As explained in the kerekagy blog, a shortlist of five names was picked by a seven-member jury and these were put to an Internet vote. "BuBi" won the most votes (9,632) followed by "bico" (9,515), "kerékbár" (7,351), "cimbike" (6,051), "bérbi" (5,854).

I'd done an earlier post about the name-giving contest, and I spent quite some time sifting through the enormous Excel sheet of submissions trying to spot names worth remarking on. From among all those names, BuBi stood out -- at least to me -- as one of the more humorous suggestions. I also quite liked "Hop on Me" and "BooDbike". Funny suggestions -- on par with the bad English translations you find in Chinese Restaurant menus sometimes.

Of course, to Hungarian ears, "BuBi" doesn't sound ridiculous. One of my Hungarian colleagues said it sounded "cute," reminding her of the slang for bubbly: "bubis" which is short for "buborékos". Another co-worker said that the word bubi was used back in the 60s-70s to denote the beehive hairdo.

A reader of my first column seemed quite annoyed at my Anglophone take on things. He (or she -- it was an anonymous comment) made the point that I had no right to argue for a "meaningless English name" and then concluded: "Cycling is LOCAL! Therefore the bike sharing system should have a HUNGARIAN name!"

All that is fair enough, of course. But please also respect my need -- as a native of the English-speaking world -- to snicker at the utterance of "BuBi". It may be ethnocentric and juvenile of me but, in my defense, I relate the following: a few years back, my wife went to the local consulate of the country known internationally, since 1984, as Burkina Faso. And when she asked about visa requirements to the country, the Hungarian clerk winced at the mention of the correct name, and told her that in Hungary, they still use the old, French colonial name "Felső Volta" (Upper Volta). The reason: Because, as it occurred to my wife later, the name Burkina Faso, sounds to Hungarian ears something like: "Leather Chinese Dick".

New Details on Budapest Bike Sharing

Plans for Budapest's planned bike-sharing scheme are getting more and more specific in the lead-up to next summer's launch. City Hall recently sent off a detailed proposal of the scheme to the European Commission as the next step in its bid for a subsidy. Here's how the scheme is shaping up:

The new system will include 1,000-1,100 bicycles and cover the most densely built-up central part of the city, roughtly bordered by the Nagykorut and flat parts of Buda near the river. The service area will encompass about seven square kilometers, with 60 docking stations in Pest and 13 in Buda. Stations will be dispersed about every 300-400m, a density in line with global best practice.

The cost of the system has been more precisely estimated now: HUF 1.32 billion (EUR 5 million). Based on City Assembly decision on March 31, the system will be installed and managed by the city-owned company Parking Ltd., whose main responsibility is enforcing Budapest parking policy.

Each docking station will have on average 22 bikes and will be installed on road space now used for car parking or on sidewalks. Bicycles will be rented on a self-service basis with bank cards, credit cards, chip cards or mobile telephones. The system will run 24 hours a day, the first 30 minutes will be free-of-charge, and then there will be incremental charging. Testing will begin in June 2011.

A recent article on the system from the Hungarian News Agency is here.

Budapest to Pursue Bike Sharing

The Budapest City Council has voted to go ahead with a bike-sharing system -- like the Velíb system in Paris -- in downtown.

According to the English-language article on Caboodle.com, implementation would depend on getting EU funding. But if the application is successful, the system would put 800 to 1,200 bikes in downtown parked at stations placed every 300-600 metres.

The system would come on line in 2011 covering about 6 square kilometres between the Danube and the Nagy körút. After that, it could be expanded across the river, including up Bartok Béla út, to cover an area of up to 20 square kilometres.

Contrary to my earlier impressions from when the city started its feasibility study, this seems quite ambitious. Barcelona's Bicing system (pictured), for instance, is one of the biggest systems implemented in Europe and it has 3,000 bikes and stations placed every 300-400 metres.

In Central and Eastern Europe, there's been nothing on this scale. The systems in Prague, Krakow and Bucharest have no more than 200-300 bikes a piece. And the system is envisioned as a high-end, automated type in which bikes can be taken out with swipe cards, whereas some systems in this region -- as in Bucharest and Ploiesti, Romania -- are low-tech systems in which cyclists must check out bikes from a human vendor.

As I've said before, the city will have to improve cycling conditions downtown with a more comprehensive lane and path network, good bridge crossings, priority traffic signals, etc., etc. before public bikes will be attractive. But maybe the fact that the city has commited to this will give that added incentive to make this improvements.