michael r james

Alas,it pains me to say so but Alan Davies writes another confusing piece on what many other cities have decided is a service of high public amenity.

First and foremost is the issue of costs. Davies says “the Paris system cost a whopping $140 million to set-up” but he needs to read his Wikipedia more closely:

JCDecaux paid the scheme's start-up costs, totalling about $140 million, and employs around 285 people full-time to operate the system and repair the bikes on a ten-year contract. The city receives all revenue from the programme, as well as a fee of about US$4.3 million a year.

Now I am not going to say that any scheme will come as a “free lunch” to the city. Paris has had a large unexpected cost of vandalism which is estimated at up to 2M euro per year. But really is $140M such a “whopping” cost? And a capital cost incurred by the commercial partner? In the context of almost any other transport cost it is peanuts. And with the various issues, including vandalism, being overcome with time, there is a steady annual income stream from the advertisers. It is beyond silly, indeed willfully obfuscating, to argue that costs of this order are decisive. (If it averages even as high as $5M per year, this is one 20th or less of the cost of a single km of new freeway or widening.)

Anyway, instead of focussing on negatives what Australian cities need to examine is what makes such schemes a success elsewhere. In both London and Paris it is certainly partly that the city is so compact that cycling is often the best option (for distances where walking is a bit too time consuming). But, as I have previously written, Paris –contrary to what many Australians may think–is a very good model to follow. Namely, that a city and culture of semi-laissez faire driving/parking (midway between Italians and northern Europeans) CAN be converted culturally and behaviourally.

As a decade-long resident (and sometime cyclist until it was stolen) I was pretty gob-smacked by the change in driver behaviour when I happened to visit in mid-2007 only a month after introduction of the Velib bike scheme. First, is to realize that one cannot just introduce such a bike culture overnight and expect it to take root. In fact Paris had been building bikeways and infrastructure towards increased bike use since the mid-90s, after a several months transport strike had caused lots of Parisians to rediscover cycling, walking and roller-blading to get around. This encouraged the city to begin building proper cycleways–some segregated and some sharing with buses and taxis on new busways that took a lane from the wider boulevards. Second, in turn this involved obvious training of the bus and taxi drivers–easier enough since their livelihoods depended on proper respect for cyclists. Third, at some point in the 2000s (my Parisian friends tell me) there was an official blitz against car driver transgressors–something unthinkable in my days in Paris! Apparently it was para-military, in the sense of zero-tolerance and widely policed along with saturation publicity. It worked, in a way I would never have believed. Parisian drivers have been tamed!

So, by the time the Velib scheme was introduced, more than a decade of building proper cycleways and integrating busways, into a Paris*-wide network, the city and its people were ready. The Velib scheme was literally an overnight success (though the various problems took a very determined city government to overcome in the first year). The lesson: an “overnight” success that took at least a decade of persistent government policy.

Is there any rational argument why this cannot be done in Sydney and our other cities? Of course not. (Certainly not the feeble economic-rationalist argument.) The fact that Brisbane (and perhaps Melbourne) have been lazy and, as Davies says, resorted to greenwashing, is not an argument against bikeshare schemes. And, needless to say, once you have a reasonable integrated network of mostly segregated cycleways, the helmet nonsense arguments disappears. Forget the classic examples of Copenhagen or Amsterdam, but think Paris where a feral car mentality ruled the streets until quite recently.

(*Paris refers to inner Paris, population about 2.2 million, inside the Peripherique ring road, not the greater Paris area encompassing greater than 11 million.)

michael r james

Alan at 4:47 pm.

It genuinely pains me a lot. Because if someone who should be a natural ally of such schemes presents a rather negative case, it means the battle to tame and civilize our cities is that much harder. I must admit, if a somewhat aggressive tone crept into my post, it is because I am irritated by such arguments because they have never been applied to the fantastic mis-spending of tens of billions of dollars on freeways and tunnels that will cost our cities even more tens of billions in tolls over the coming decades (the case for the Brisbane tunnels is so weak that the concession had to be the longest ever awarded: 45 years; they are talking about 60 years for future ones but it doesn’t matter because in the short term the traffic predictions were so cooked up that all these tunnels will collapse financially within 5 years of construction; guess who will pick up the tab? Especially if Newman becomes Premier!). So you are applying a nitpicking argument to perhaps $5 to $10M pa for cycle schemes which has been ignored for billions on roads. It seems in every case–whether it is a train line to airports, or more generally public transit for cities or HSR for inter-city routes, and cycle schemes for inner cities, you cannot calculate the “benefit”. So it seems in all cases you simply favour the status quo: more roads.

And why be so pessimistic about JCDecaux funding a Sydney scheme? Certainly they helped set up the Brisbane scheme–and this arrangement might be the only factor stopping the city closing it down (ie. the commercial arrangement which is long-term as JCD knows from their worldwide experience, might be required to bring the scheme to proper functioning). And this from a council that wants to (and is) spend $1 billion on repairing existing roads in the city.

I’m afraid it seems your vague definition of “benefits” would condemn all such progressive and long-term schemes before they get started. What monetary benefit can one ascribe to making a city or urban environment more walkable, more safe for pedestrians, simply more pleasant? It is the same argument about trying to justify public transit versus more roads. The government (and certainly not a private company) cannot recover the full cost by charging fares; this is precisely the economic rationalist argument: therefore public transit should not be built, because it is “uneconomic”. The public health benefit alone would justify encouraging more walking and bike riding, not to mention actually relieving congestion so that freight and services operate more efficiently on the roads.

I wonder what reasons you think the Paris council went ahead with their scheme? Or NYC where they have to fight an even more regressive car culture?

michael r james

@Alan Davies at 5:42 pm

Actually I do not disagree with the argument that neither Brisbane or Melbourne properly planned or thought-out the adoption of these share schemes. I predicted that the Brisbane scheme could simply not attract riders as forecast–because the city’s cycle network is woeful, despite what Newman or now Quirk might claim (they count all those useless, nay veritable dangerous, cyclelanes consisting of whitelanes that are overridden by buses and cars.

Naturally it makes a lot more sense that the network needs to be developed first. But in our awful incompetent Anglo manner, it is better to start somewhere (though the quality of city vision in Brisbane is dispiriting on both sides; as usual only the Greens have sensible plans). I don’t agree that the perception of city cycling has been adversely affected. On the contrary, most people realize that cycling has to attain primary safety (ie. separation from traffic) before most people would venture into our inner city, with or without a helmet. So, yes we will go thru this unnecessary messy period and “waste” millions of dollars but the end goal will slowly but surely come closer. After the spending orgy on roads in the past decade–in all major east coast cities–I think the tide has turned with the unwashed public; even they can see it does not solve the problem. Just like for public transport in Brisbane, more buses cannot solve it. We have wasted at least the last decade spending on non-solutions and the cost is simply incalculable. No matter your arguments you are quibbling over a few millions while ignoring the bigger picture. (Are you an economist by chance?

I cannot see how your approach (not even sure what it is; do you just believe our cities should abandon any attempt to encourage cycling?) leads to progress.