Bike Share is Changing Dallas – Now What?

Now that Spring is here, we’ll soon see how bike share will change Dallas-Fort Worth. The City of Dallas is very much the epicenter of the drama, but cities across the metroplex are feeling the same pressures in different ways.

At an Oak Cliff community conversation on Bike Share in February, Lime Bike Regional Director Anthony Fleo assured attendees that they are running a for-profit company and it will stop adding more bikes when they stop seeing an increase in profit from it. “We’re still looking for that magic number,” he said.

Dallas is Lime Bike’s largest market in the US, in terms of actual number of rides. Unbelievable. On a chilly winter Saturday in January, 15,000 people used bike share. Lime Bike alone saw 5,800 rides. This is not speculation. People visit our city from much more bikeable place around the world and come here expecting the same. So they hope on bikes and teeter into the road.

With 8,500 bikes on the road, Citibike in NYC provides an average of 56,000 rides/day throughout the year. We’re already at one quarter of that. NYC saw the number of bike share rides almost triple in four years (from 20,619 rides in June 2013 at Citibike’s launch to 57,705 in June 2017). Between 2010 and 2015 the Big Apple saw the estimated number of trips taken by bike overall increase 80 percent (from 250,000 to 450,000 trips annually) with the introduction of bike share and a concerted increase in bicycle infrastructure across the city. (NYC Mobility Report)

For all you folks thinking “I’m never going to ride a bike. Get those bikes off my road!” just think: the more folks on bike, the fewer cars in your way! To extend this analogy, in NYC, over half of all bike share rides (56 percent) occur during the morning and evening rush hour.

Granted, we’re not NYC. But if we play our cards right, we’ll sustain this trend and become a more bike-friendly and more multi-modal city. Imagine for a moment that we are a city that actually has cyclists everywhere … What would need to change to accommodate all those users? Or, do we simply wish they would disappear? This is our moment to decide what kind of city Dallas wants to be.

Have you tried it? Of the 114,000 people who have downloaded the Lime Bike app, approx 90,000 use the app within any given week. It’s insanely useful.

I dare you — pick one company, download the app, and plan your adventure. Bike to dinner one evening. Bike to the park on Saturday. Bike to your closest DART station. You’ll quickly see how these random bikes scattered everywhere make your life a bit more fun. And maybe even a bit easier. Even if you own your own bicycle, you don’t have to ALWAYS have it with you! Once you ‘break the seal,’ get the app, and try it once, you’ll start seeing what I mean. Park your car at City Hall downtown and bike share to a show in Deep Ellum! Park at Mockingbird Station, DART train to City Place and bike share to dinner in Uptown! I’m telling you, this is going to change our city. We are, in this instant, growing our bike culture, like it or not.

Dallas also has the least restrictions on the companies. “We’re waiting to see what happens,” said Councilman Philip Kingston at the community conversation. The City of Dallas has demanded that the companies hire more staff to straighten bikes that tip over and keep bikes clear of handicap ramps and from blocking sidewalks and trails. City staff and elected officials hold weekly meetings with managers of all the bike share companies, to gather user data and make any necessary adjustments.

Kingston and Council member Lee Kleinman have begun working on an ordinance for regulation of the bike share companies, to be enacted by as early as the beginning of summer. It likely won’t limit the number of bicycles but it likely will charge fees based on fleet size or profits.

Meanwhile, Kingston said all the largest cities in Texas have let Dallas city leaders know they’re watching to see how we handle the situation to follow our lead.

Granted there are a LOT of bike share bicycles everywhere. But it’s still way fewer bikes than in the very bike-friendly cities of the world. Granted most bike friendly cities have docked bike shares, so the bikes strewn about tend to be personal bicycles, and they’re usually parked in more respectful locations – along the sides of buildings, along sidewalks, near building entries – generally out of the way, but EVERYWHERE nonetheless.

The biggest problem in Dallas is really the few disrespectful people throwing bikes in our White Rock Lake, creeks, and the Trinity, putting them in trees and running over rows bikes. Seriously? It’s a shame to see people defacing property the way we’ve seen people destroy some of these bikes. There may be too many of them – but there’s no excuse for the bad behavior we’ve seen. Yes, they’re cheaply constructed — I’d hate to see what Dallasites would do if they actually were great bikes. It’s appalling.

---

What Now?

So, if we are suddenly to become a bike-friendly city, what do we do to ease this transition? What are the real issues here and what are real solutions to an explosion of our bike culture, with or without the proper biking infrastructure?

We need more designated bike parking areas

It’s probably time for some citywide campaigns about where we think IS appropriate for bikes to be parked, and funding and design assistance for business who would like to incorporate bike parking areas! Or how about lower parking requirements if a development includes bike parking? Those are real solutions to problems attributed to a growing bike culture.

We need for more safe roads/trails/bike lanes for cyclists

You may wonder where all these cyclists are supposed to be biking. Dallas has so few bike lanes. The 2011 Dallas Bike Plan called for $10 million of new infrastructure investments over 10 years. Seven years into the plan, we’ve invested just $3 million.

We need to accept biking as an acceptable and desirable form of everyday transportation in our growing, multi-modal Metroplex.

So, how bikeable is Dallas? Stay tuned for an infrastructure update …

Right now, the only thing to work on now is how car drivers treat cyclists. As trails and neighborhood destination connectivity increases, the more people of all ages we’ll have on bikes, and the less this will be an “us” versus “them” issue. In cities where I’ve seen bike culture increase, there’s been an intentional increase in the promotion and funding of biking amenities and connections between destinations (whether schools, homes, grocery stores, or local entertainment districts.) In planning and urban design, aim to design safe routes for users aged 8 to 80 (I like to say 5 to 95 because my grandma’s 94 and i could easily see her biking if it were safe enough, and I know some very capable, precocious 5-year-olds). By designing for those very young and very old users, we leave out the politics of socioeconomics and focus on the people we love who cannot drive cars. People whose mobility and independence, regardless of being able to drive or not, may be the thing that keeps them healthy and happy.

---

So, Dallas, what’s our vision of success for our city? A multimodal city of great neighborhoods that enable equal opportunity for all? I challenge you to give that vision a try.

So we have a few months of Spring ahead of us to see just how many riders will be out on the streets.

It begs the question, do we really want cyclists in our city?

Are we going to shut this down because it’s “messy”? Or stifle it so we don’t see how big it might get?

With 10,000 Lime Bikes plus an estimated 8,000 more between the other 5 companies, we could have the capacity for around 118,600 rides/day. If Dallas has even a quarter of that, can you imagine how many bicycles that would be, on the road, at any given moment!