Behind bikeshare mania, Clear Channel

[Oyez Oyez]

Behind bikeshare mania, Clear Channel

par Oyez Oyez » Mar Déc 16, 2008 11:30 am

I never though I'd be writing so much about this, but the truth is I can't help it. In worldwide bike-related news, bikeshare mania is spreading like wildfire - especially since last week's news that Montreal's Bixi made the list of 2008's best inventions. There were plenty of in the wake of that story, but bloggers are even more keen to discuss it. From : "It's time for this to take hold in other cities around the world"; : "well planned, thoughtful;" : "it's still just a bloody bicycle folks, not a cure for the common cold!"

The broader bikeshare frenzy has hit the mainstream press, too, with this week seeing a big influx of attention to the burdgeoning trend. According to this week's
feature on bikeshares, there are two types of mayors in
Europe: "those who have a bicycle-sharing program and those who want
one." Scanning even farther afield: says the city is considering building bike kiosks, complete with "washing stations." A writer on the blog says of the Montreal bikeshare post in Time, "I wish this could be done here in Bangalore." Back in North America, the , a centre-left political blog read by millions in
the U.S., also featured a decent write-up about the trend. These mainstream
sources more or less heap praise for bikesharing, implicitly or
explicitlly imploring mayors to hop on the bandwagon. And it seems like cities are complying, and at breakneck speed. Of course back in North America countless cities are looking into options, including Toronto and Vancouver.

But in all this bikeshare hooplah, a less-shiny side of the coin revealed itself. The Times piece briefly touches on it, but good old hits the nail on the head, revealing the profit-hunting ways behind the
rise of the bikeshares in Europe:

...The real impetus for the recent spread of bike loan programs in
Europe was less public-minded environmental goodwill than a ferocious
private sector scramble for advertising Euros. At a time when growing
numbers of European municipalities were exploring ways to promote
bicycle use, the companies which sell outdoor advertising space began
to propose two-wheeled rental schemes as part of their bids for cities’
outdoor billboard concessions.

Two firms battle each other for the spoils of this lucrative
European market: Clear Channel, the largest outdoor advertising
corporation in the world, and its leading competitor, the French
company JCDecaux (which prefers to call itself a provider of “urban
furniture,” and is best known for the sleek, stylish, coin-operated,
self-cleaning public toilet units it maintains on Paris’s streets).
Locked in a perennial contest for municipal advertising contracts,
these companies sought to sweeten their respective offers in recent
years by bundling them with bike-sharing systems.

Their aggressive commercial strategies thus spawned the
proliferation across the old continent of systems with cutesy names and
brightly painted bicycles. Rennes launched a free bike-share system
under contract with Clear Channel in 1998; and when Vienna abandoned
its Copenhagen-inspired initiative after it suffered widespread
vandalism in only a few weeks of operation in 2000, the city awarded
JCDecaux a concession for its Citybike bike-rental program. In Norway,
Clear Channel concluded contracts for rental systems with four cities
in 2001 and 2002 (Trondheim, Drammen, Bergen and Oslo), JCDecaux signed
with Porsgrunn in 2003, and Sandnes has run its own since 2001. Amidst
this rapid profusion, Lyon’s 2005 contract with JCDecaux for its
was a watershed. Its fleet of 2,000 bikes made it at that time the
largest in the world, and attracted unprecedented numbers of users (10
% of the city’s inhabitants are subscribed today). Lyon’s success
caught city planners’ attention across Europe: the following year,
JCDecaux installed the Cyclocity system in Brussels and Vél’Hello in
Aix-en-Provence, Clear Channel set up Stockholm’s Citybike system, the
Spanish city of Burgos put in place its own free BiciBur program, and
in 2007 Orléans awarded a concession for Vélo+ to the French state
railway SNCF’s subsidiary EFFIA.

The key to Vélib’s unexpected success, its unprecedented scale, also
came about as something of an accident. When Paris Mayor Bertrand
Delanoë decided to implement a system in Paris in the fall of 2006, he
clearly had something like Lyon’s model in mind. His initial invitation
for bids called for 6,000 bikes and 600 pick-up and drop-off points -
had it been left at that, it would still have been the biggest in
Europe, although on the same order of magnitude as Lyon’s network.

In the first round of bidding, Clear Channel beat out JCDecaux - but
the French company, determined to keep a tight grip on its flagship
concession on outdoor advertising in Paris, mobilized a battalion of
lawyers to get the bid overturned in court. To be certain that its
American rival would not beat it out a second time, JCDecaux submitted
a revised offer that far surpassed what the city had imagined: 20,600
bikes and a network of 1,450 stations so dense that no point within the
city would be more than 300 meters away from the nearest station. Clear
Channel had clearly lost and Parisians woke up to the world’s largest
bike sharing network. The new system, the unlikely fruit of intense
competition for advertising market share between Clear Channel and
JCDecaux rather than any ecological good intentions, now made it
possible for Parisians to pick up and drop off a bicycle anytime and
anywhere in Paris.

For city mayors and other public servants, bikeshares are a relatively cheap and easy way to gain some green credentials, especially if offered in a cookie-cutter formula from one of the world's biggest multinational corporations. But should cities be jumping on the bike-share bandwagon no matter who is running the show?

Montreal's bikeshare system has stayed in-house, and we should commend the city for making what might have been a tough decision. Unfortunately, as we watch the unfolding of the mad-grab for bikeshares across North America, we are already seeing a different story. Clear Channel is behind Washington, D.C.'s new bike program; it looks like they are also behind plans for bikeshares in and .

Some may not be taking the bait so easily. There was
of infighting among city councilors considering a 15-year contract with
Clear Channel Outdoor, which would have maintained bus kiosks in
exchange for cheaply obtained ad space. Though the full article isn't accessible, I'd guess Minneapolis's proposed would also be overseen by the communications monster, meaning this anti-Clear Channel rally could knock the megacorporation back a couple notches.

 

There are to dread 's
encroachment into our lives: outdoors, they represent the siphoning off
of public spaces into advertising profit-packages; indoors, they
represent the corporatization of radio and television, drastically
narrowing the scope and diversity of the media's content. Perhaps it
is a question of scope; a city might refrain from
ceding rights to its advertising in bus kiosques in exchange for a
teeny, ineffective bikeshare program, but agree if it is for a more
substsantial one. Personally I'd rather not give these guys a
single penny of profit from our eco-guilt.

In the mad dash for greener-looking cities, city-slickers must remind their councillors that bikeshares do not equal adequate bike infrastructure.

It's not that Montreal is cutting corners for the sake of greening
its public image, but for other cities that may be closer to the truth. So if we are to be a model for other North
American cities, let us be one for an impressive bike lane system,
non-corporate bikesharing, and, despite the cold, an increase in
commuter-pedalists and other alternative transportation habits. But we
shouldn't stop there; Montreal also has less-flashy green projects to
tend to, like its ,
for one. As long as people are paying attention to us, why not show that
our commitment to a healthier city is genuine and not another case of
green-washing? For municipalities such commitment will require heavy-lifting, but heavy-lifting should be their job, not Clear Channel's.

 

-- KE

 

 


Author: Kate Molleson
Category: Around townpolicyInfrastructureBixi
Publish Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:28:00 GMT

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