Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas campus are about to be invaded by a battalion of bicycles.
Whether the outcome is something to get excited about remains to be seen.
What’s the point?
Fayetteville and the University of Arkansas are driving cultural and behavioral changes with adoption of a three-year program for rentable bikes.
The City Council last Tuesday adopted a three-year bicycle sharing program to populate certain areas of Fayetteville with bikes owned and operated by a private company called VeoRide. The city worked jointly with the University of Arkansas to select the firm.
Here's how their business works:
VeoRide bicycles use on-board locking mechanisms that prevent people from using them without authorization. Someone who, from time to time, wants to ride a VeoRide bike downloads a smartphone application and creates an account. They can pay per use, or they can pay monthly or annual subscriptions. When they want to use one of the bicycles, they use the phone to scan a code on the bike. The system automatically unlocks the bike and off the rider goes. A user without a smartphone can purchase a special card or key fob that unlocks bikes with a simple swipe.
To promote the system's use, city leaders agreed to kick in $20,000 per year as a subsidy to reduce the company's fees to riders. The University of Arkansas did the same, and the Fayetteville Advertising and Promotion Commission agreed to pay $10,000 with the idea it would make Fayetteville even more marketable to tourists. So, all told, $50,000 in public funding will bolster the Indiana company's operation and deliver discounts to customers. With the discounts, a monthly subscription will be $17. An annual subscription will cost $70. UA and Fayetteville Public School students and faculty will get deeper discounts.
To promote the effort's success even more, the City Council agreed to give VeoRide exclusive rights to operate a bike-share system in Fayetteville. Sorry, competitors.
Within weeks, people in Fayetteville will see 340 of
VeoRide's bikes populate designated areas of the city. Using their smartphones, they can find the nearest available bikes. When the ride is over, the user returns the bike to a specified area. City and university leaders are still trying to determine whether to use return stations, where bikes would be concentrated, or to create larger "geo-fenced" areas of the city in which the bicycles can simply be left anywhere on a public right of way, such as a sidewalk.
How will this avoid turning Fayetteville into a uncontrolled mess of bicycles? If a customer fails to return the bike to a designated area, additional fees will be charged through their account because VeoRide staff will have to retrieve them. Smartphone customers will also be able to report when a bicycle is in an inappropriate or unwanted location. According to the company, their technology can also alert their local employees when a bike is lying down or when it's been left unattended outside designated areas.
This program is an extension of the ever-growing cycling culture in Northwest Arkansas. Fayetteville, along with many of the municipalities in Washington and Benton counties, is already occupied by thousands of privately owned two-wheeled, pedal-powered vehicles. City-based expansions of local trails and the creation of the 36-mile Razorback Greenway connecting the region's larger cities have inspired a lot of recreational riders and created a cycling ecosystem of businesses and organizations. It doesn't hurt a bit that the Walton family has put considerable sums to work in support of bicycling as transportation, recreation and healthy living.
But this is more than promoting the pleasures of cycling, as fun as that may be. Fayetteville, home to 27,000 university students, is driven (so to speak) to promote the use of bicycles as a form of transportation, a viable alternative to vehicles with combustible engines that pollute and clog roadways. The City Council has set lofty goals for sustainability, including a reduction in per capita vehicle miles traveled to 2010 levels and a 25 percent portion of the population using biking, walking and public transit by 2030. That, believe it or not, is a mere 12 years away.
Whether it will achieve those measures isn't really the point today. Rather, it's important to recognize those goals are driving public policy decisions. And converting more people to biking, especially for those easily rideable short-distance trips, is key to achieving goals of burning less energy and creating less pollution.
We are excited about Fayetteville's advocacy for bikes as transportation and its adoption of this new program. It's an excitement similar to opening a present on Christmas Day: One isn't sure what to expect, but the potential of what's about to be discovered is thrilling. Sometimes, once the wrapping paper has been torn through, the reality lives up to the potential. Sometimes, it's just socks and underwear.
This, however, is a three-year commitment. It either works exceptionally well, works but needs changes to be more effective, or fails miserably. It is worth a try.
The only discomfort we feel regards the use of public money to subsidize a private business. It is entirely understandable that a municipality or university would want to provide seed money to encourage the start-up of a service that, in the view of those institutions' leaders, achieves a public purpose. VeoRide itself, in its pitch for the contract, expressly stated its system can be self-sufficient based on revenue from riders. It was a local policy choice to throw taxpayer dollars into the mix to discount VeoRide's service. We would hope that would end after three years.
The company undoubtedly has opportunities to sell sponsorships to local businesses who might fancy having their logos and messages on the bikes traveling across the community. But, more than that, if private enterprise cannot be successful, why should taxpayers be expected to shore it up?
Overall, the plan seems strong, particularly in light of Fayetteville's recent efforts to bolster public transit, too. The University of Arkansas' Razorback Transit and the regional bus system, Ozark Regional Transit, are working with the city to convert all buses in the city to no-fare riding. The cooperative effort will also reduce wait times between buses on key routes.
Buses can't get passengers to the front door of their destinations in most cases, so imagine how convenient it will be for easily rented bicycles to be ready at or near bus stops.
This is exactly the kind of program a town like Fayetteville and a university like Arkansas can use to change the local culture, to popularize a mode of transportation that promotes the health of individual users and the community as a whole. It won't be perfect and relies heavily on the private company's responsiveness to problems, but it holds great potential for a brighter future in which neighbors might actually stop and visit with each other for a while.
Commentary on 08/12/2018