Thanks to support from Peninsula bike share cities and bike users, Â it looks like the Peninsula bike share pilot will get a reprieve through June 30, 2016. Â While the overall system was slated to expand to 7.000 bikes, including 4,500 in San Francisco and 1,000 in San Jose, the Peninsula stations in Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Redwood City were proposed to be removed.
Tomorrow, the MTC will review an updated proposal to extend the pilot, giving cities the ability to reposition stations, including stations that test the ability to use bikeshare for Caltrain last-mile connectivity. Â Â Depending on the level of use, the cities will be able to maintain the system at pricing levels up to no cost, and to defray the cost of the stations with local advertising.
The place to watch most closely for the success of an extended pilot is Mountain View, which has wanted to test the use of bikeshare for Caltrain last mile connectivity to North Bayshore and other employment locations, a use case that was not allowed in the initial pilot which required stations to be close together. In general, research shows that station density is a critical factor in system success.  However, the Peninsula has a distinctive land use pattern with major job centers 1-3 miles from backbone transit, and as a consequence Caltrain has the highest transit-bike use in the country, with 15% of Caltrain riders using a bicycle for first and/or last mile.   As overall Caltrain ridership soars, the level of crowding is encouraging pursuit of “offboard” methods to support people who want to use bikes with Caltrain.
To thank MTC for the pilot extension, send a quick note toto MTC planning staffer Alex Bockelman, abockelman@mtc.ca.gov, and Caltrain’s last-mile staffer,pettys@samtrans.com.  Also copy the staff person in the city where you use Caltrain – Jessica Manzi in Redwood City, jmanzi@redwoodcity.org, Rafael Rius in Palo Alto, rafael.rius@cityofpalo.org, Linda Forsberg in Mountain View, linda.forsberg@mountainview.
Any chance of increasing the number of bike share stations, especially into residential areas so people can use them for “first mile” trips from home instead of just “last mile” trips?
How about having the Mountain View Transportation Management Association take over the Bike Share program in Mountain View?
The program is mostly for folks commuting to Mountain View (or visiting on business); same target population as the TMA.
My 2 cents, as a resident I would rather see my City improve bike routes/bike paths for all than spending money on a yet unproven program.
That might conceivably make sense, after the pilot period shows whether the “last mile” usage scenario works well enough to keep, since it would play a similar role as shuttles.
That’s a good question – are there places that are dense enough so that there would be enough people in walking distance of a station? Good lockers (elockers) are another good first-mile solution.
The Midtown Shopping Center in Palo Alto would be a good location for a bike share station. That’s about 1 mile from the California Ave Caltrain, which is too far for everyday commuters to walk but easy biking distance.
The other huge market that Bike Share is not serving is people not using Caltrain every day. Stations in residential areas would allow people to bike to other parts of town and back, like from Midtown Palo Alto to Downtown or to California Ave or to Stanford. Many people do not do this right now with their personal bicycles because of the fear of bicycle theft and vandalism.
This doesn’t seem to be the type of trip that bike share is suited for.
Wouldn’t all the bikes pile up in North Bayshore in the day, and then come back to Caltrain in the evening? Without a truck shuttling bikes back and forth, only the lucky first arrivals would get a bike.
How would the City ensure that the bikes are used for more than one roundtrip per day?
Bike share systems that have kiosks at transit centers all have rebalancing needs – whether in New York, DC, San Francisco, and or other places. Rebalancing will be needed, and it’s not unique to Mountain View. There are open questions about how this will perform financially compared to shuttles – which are currently financially supported by the city, employers and the transit system. The good news is that this can be tested now.
Good point, and good idea over time as PA improves bike and shuttle facilities. I think it may take some encouragement for Palo Alto to continue the pilot. The challenge is that Stanford is being slower to show interest than other major employers (Stanford has a program offering folding bikes to employees).
I hypothesize you could more than double the ridership of the palo alto bike share system by adding one, just one, station in the center of Stanford’s campus.
Mountain View, Redwood City, and Palo Alto should – along with our big thinkers at Caltrain – simply do a survey of riders boarding or detraining at those Caltrain stations with a bike, and ask them where they ride to. That will give them the answer key as to where to site stations.
Lots of people are suggesting new bike share station locations on the peninsula. Hope some of these get implemented. http://suggest.bayareabikeshare.com/page/about
Additionally, they should be taking a survey of every user of the bike station at 4th/King. That’s a prime audience to perhaps leave the bike at home – the bike station is oversubscribed and bike share could help. There is the issue – however, that the docks at the Caltrain station fill up in the AM and users get dock blocked. But there is a non-trivial amount of users who store their bike overnight at the bike station who could be used to rebalance the system by getting them on bike share.
One small adjustment, BikeShare should do asap is to allow bikes to be returned to another city. As I understand it, it’s not currently possible to pick a bike in Mountain View and drop it in nearby Palo Alto. That makes no sense even in a pilot phase.
I have ridden Bike Share from Palo Alto to Mountain View (California Ave Caltrain to San Antonio Caltrain and then San Antonio Caltrain to Castro Street and vice versa) with no problems. The bikes checked in fine. The biggest problem is that some of the stations are so far apart that the 30 minute time limit is a problem.
I understand that San Francisco bike share bikes cannot be returned in other cities, but realistically, San Francisco to Redwood City is 30 miles and at least 2 hours for most people.
I don’t think this is the case – my understanding is that the only incompatible docs are in San Francisco – and given the pricing model it doesn’t make much sense to ride from San Francisco to Redwood City.