The Chainlink

Divvy costing taxpayers big...

... according to this item from the Illinois Policy Institute:

http://illinoispolicy.org/blog/blog.asp?ArticleSource=6230

I have real basis on which to form an opinion. I have yet to try Divvy (I have plenty of my own bikes) and don't live in Chicago. A friend at work passed the link along.

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Permalink Reply by h' Zerocats on October 7, 2013 at 12:41pm

I think the biggest rationale for a custom bike vs a Fuji or Cannondale is still being missed-- it has to be =unmistakeable= as a bike share bike to reduce the likelihood of theft.

That said-- I lost the thread somewhere-- is $5100 really the actual cost paid for each bike? Is there a source for that?

Davis Moore said:

Trek and Fuji cop bikes would have killed the chances of a bike share system getting off the ground. They simply do not make for an apt comparison. The idea is for people in "regular" clothes, especially professional clothes, of all different heights and abilities and experience to ride.

No one in a suit or a dress who doesn't bike normally is going to be hiking their leg over a top tube for 2 mile trips with bike share. At least not in the numbers to make bike share a success. Making a super adjustable, sturdy, step through frame and not simply durable, but fairly idiot proof bike is not cheap. Add to that specific security features attached to each, as well as cusomized super flat resistant tires, specialized hardware, etc. etc. the costs add up. Maybe not to the $5000 some odd figure that's being tossed around (which I find highly dubious) but still.

Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on October 7, 2013 at 1:12pm



h' 1.0 said:

That said-- I lost the thread somewhere-- is $5100 really the actual cost paid for each bike? Is there a source for that?
I don't think so. I think the authors ignored all the other Divvy expenses and just divided the costs by the number of bikes. They also assumed that for it to be a success it needed to be (at least) revenue neutral, which, as others have pointed out, might be a reasonable assumption.
Permalink Reply by Adam Herstein on October 7, 2013 at 1:16pm

Reminds me of when people complain about the price of technology products. "If the parts in the iPhone only cost $200 to make, then why am I paying $399 for it?" They fail to take R&D, marketing, manufacturing, payroll, etc. costs into consideration.

Skip Montanaro 12mi said:



h' 1.0 said:

That said-- I lost the thread somewhere-- is $5100 really the actual cost paid for each bike? Is there a source for that?
I don't think so. I think the authors ignored all the other Divvy expenses and just divided the costs by the number of bikes. They also assumed that for it to be a success it needed to be (at least) revenue neutral, which, as others have pointed out, might be a reasonable assumption.
Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on October 7, 2013 at 1:55pm



Skip Montanaro 12mi said:

.... as others have pointed out, might be a reasonable assumption.
*sigh* I can't type some days. Misspellings are generally not a problem, but I tend to omit entire words. Try this instead:
.... as others have pointed out, might not be a reasonable assumption.
Permalink Reply by Ryan Lakes on October 7, 2013 at 2:12pm

I don't know the details, but I especially disliked the local company not getting the bike sharing contract because that local's business may now be significantly decreased due to the new availability of Divvy bikes. To me, that's our city actively disenfranchising its own citizens/small business owners. To think that the community of Chicago can't rise to the challenge of putting some bicycles on the street for folks to rent is a bit ridiculous and not having done so just sets us back.

Otherwise, I'm glad bike sharing is here. 

Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on October 7, 2013 at 2:49pm



Ryan Lakes said:

I don't know the details, but I especially disliked the local company not getting the bike sharing contract because that local's business may now be significantly decreased due to the new availability of Divvy bikes.

I assume you mean http://www.bikechicago.com/ ? I'm sympathetic, but there's no guarantee that a local bike rental company would be able to adequately scale up to the needs of a city-wide bike sharing program. The odds are that another company that's already implemented one or more bike sharing programs elsewhere will have a better shot at success. Alta's website indicates that they operate seven bike sharing programs in the US and one in Australia. All told, they have installed over 13,000 bikes. Given the information on their About page, it appears they operate bike rental operations in New York, San Francisco, Miami, and Washington, DC as well. It's great to see a Chicago-based company broadening its base. I suspect they aren't all that badly affected by the introduction of Divvy.

Permalink Reply by Ryan Lakes on October 7, 2013 at 3:57pm

The city could have scaled up to handle the needs of a city-wide bike sharing program by partnering with a local entity. To the extent that the local entity is equipped to handle it themselves, all the better. Where they are not, consultants and subcontracts fill the gaps. That would have been my preference to ensure that the risks and profits of local investments stay local to the max and that regional identity is strengthened. I would have also preferred a unique bicycle design rather than the replicas of those in other cities.   

I only mean to share the concept that if Chicago truly is a world class city, then it can take care of itself. Empowering its own community members rather than outsourcing is how I imagine making that more of the reality.

Permalink Reply by S on October 7, 2013 at 4:42pm

I'm sorry but I disagree that scaling up to a large system would be easy and any gaps can easily be filled by subcontractors and and consultants.  If that were true, you wouldn't see the issues businesses run into as they try to expand from small stores/operations to larger sizes.  Having a patchwork of contractors and consultants seems like a recipe for errors and issues to come up and to have the various people blame each other for the problems.  

Being a world class city doesn't mean that you have the facilities to do everything needed by yourself.  I don't think any of the other world class cities uses purely local business for everything so why should Chicago try to hold itself to the same standard if it means that projects end up being implemented poorly?

Ryan Lakes said:

The city could have scaled up to handle the needs of a city-wide bike sharing program by partnering with a local entity. To the extent that the local entity is equipped to handle it themselves, all the better. Where they are not, consultants and subcontracts fill the gaps. That would have been my preference to ensure that the risks and profits of local investments stay local to the max and that regional identity is strengthened. I would have also preferred a unique bicycle design rather than the replicas of those in other cities.   

I only mean to share the concept that if Chicago truly is a world class city, then it can take care of itself. Empowering its own community members rather than outsourcing is how I imagine making that more of the reality.

Permalink Reply by Ryan Lakes on October 7, 2013 at 5:00pm

Though I see your point, I think that we will just have to agree to disagree Skip. Chicago also has many accomplished project management companies who skillfully oversee complex projects (vastly more complex than bike share) with large numbers of subcontractors.

And again, I am not familiar with many of the details of the bike share deal, but am simply stating my preference for how such contracts get awarded when possible and only on the conceptual level.

Permalink Reply by Tom Dworzanski on October 7, 2013 at 5:35pm

Hopefully in 4.5 years there will be some competitors with credible and proven systems to compete for the next contract.

Permalink Reply by Michael Hulburt on October 7, 2013 at 6:05pm

Being a world-class city requires the city to be a part of the world, sharing ideas from around the world and also furthering its own ideas based on what it as learned. A world-class city cannot be isolated from the world. Also, as we have mentioned multiple times in this thread, many world-class cities—Boston, Washington DC, New York, Melbourne, and soon the San Francisco Bay area—have bike share run by Alta, and many more cities use the same Bixi bicycles—Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Minneapolis, London, Aspen, Chattanooga, Columbus. Why change something that clearly works so well?


Ryan Lakes said:

The city could have scaled up to handle the needs of a city-wide bike sharing program by partnering with a local entity. To the extent that the local entity is equipped to handle it themselves, all the better. Where they are not, consultants and subcontracts fill the gaps. That would have been my preference to ensure that the risks and profits of local investments stay local to the max and that regional identity is strengthened. I would have also preferred a unique bicycle design rather than the replicas of those in other cities.   

I only mean to share the concept that if Chicago truly is a world class city, then it can take care of itself. Empowering its own community members rather than outsourcing is how I imagine making that more of the reality.

Also, I agree that the Police bikes are a poor comparison on several levels. The overall design of a police bike is somewhere between a performance hybrid and a front suspension mountain bike that comes in various sizes to fit a specific rider (like every other non-bike share bike). While this bike may have the features for someone who needs to be able to ride "aggressively," as one poster described, in any conditions and for all day use, I have never once seen a bike cop riding faster than 10 mph, nor have I seen a single bike cop riding in the rain, riding off road (other than riding on the sidewalk), or even so much as hopping a curb. So while they may be designed with performance in mind, it is not used. However, this performance is not at all what bikes hare is about. Bike share is about getting all people onto a bike, regardless of what size they are and what clothes they are wearing, like Davis mentioned. Also, these bike share bikes will live outside 24/7 except for the moments when they ride in the blue Sprinter vans to a different location. I really doubt that a Police Trek would last more than a year if it were constantly kept outside and subject to Chicago weather. Other features not included in that $1200 for the Trek are the generator-powered lights (and the generator of course), super puncture resistant tires, the front basket, and fenders and skirt guard—all features of the Divvy bikes that would be add-on accessories for most bikes. 

The durability of the Divvy bikes is probably the biggest feature that sets it apart from others, and one that will ensure the low maintenance costs and continued use of bike share. 

Plus you can do this:

 

Permalink Reply by Doug Haynes on October 7, 2013 at 6:16pm

And the winner of the most uninformed opinion in this thread goes to.... Reboot Oxnard!

I'm not sure if you are a troll or just really, really short ion knowledge of either of those bikes in comparison to each other...

So first off the Trek Police bike is ANYTHING but a heavy duty bike.  In fact it is really just a pretty damn cheap and crappy mountain bike with a 3x9 derailleur drive train.  It has mostly bottom tier, or close to it, Shimano drive train and shifters .  The brakes are low end Shimano  disc brakes with and pretty marginal wheels with only 32 spokes.  Nothing about the bike is anything above what you would get on a entry level mountain bike of comparable price.  It also has a suspension fork.

The Dizzy bike, on the other hand, is a purpose specific designed bike for a bike share program.  It has an internal hub, roller brakes and a generator hub that powers integral lights.  All of the fasteners on it are specialty fasteners that prevent tampering with the bikes so people cannot easily steal parts off them or mess with the bikes. They use a extra long keyed seat post that cannot be easily removed.  They use a heavier duty higher spoke count wheel than the Trek. It is also, in my opinion, a much heavier duty frame and has a complete chain guard.  All of these things cost more than the parts on the Trek...

So, lets take a look at all the reasons the Trek is inferior to the Divvy bike for it's intended use:

  1. Drive train:
    1. The Trek has a derailleur based drive train that is much more fragile; a fall or getting bashed around will knock it all out of whack.
    2. The Treks derailleur drive train is much more complex to use than the Divvy bike's internal 3spd.
    3. The Trek will not accept a chain guard so pants will get dirty.
    4. All of the parts on the Trek would be harder to make theft proof.
  2. Lights:
    1. The Trek has none.
  3. Wheels:
    1. Heavier duty on the Divvy.
  4. Brakes:
    1. Trek has discs which are susceptible to getting bent and having service issues where the Divvy bike has Roller brakes that require almost no service and have a MUCH longer service life.
  5. Sizing/Saddle:
    1. The Trek is much less one size fits all; going with a size small enough for short folks would result in a bike that did not fit tall people and vise-versa.
    2. The Trek has no way to retain the seat post and still be left adjustable.
  6. Tires:
    1. The ones on the Trek are not puncture resistant the ones on the Divvy are.
  7. Theft issues:
    1. The Trek has quick release wheels and the Divvy has special tamper proof ones.
    2. The Trek would need to have much of the hardware changed out to be theft proof.
  8. There is more but I am getting bored with this...

So yeah, the reason the Dizzy bike costs so much more is there are a ton of special features, ones that are more expensive then the norm, included to make it a bike viable for a bike share program.  As somebody who sells bikes and is pretty up to date on the cost of things I would say that for a regular production bike you would be around 3 times the cost of the police bike, if not more. And that is for a bike that is being built in the kind of volume that Trek or Specialized buy bikes in not much smaller runs with as many parts specific to the bike.  Once you factor all of that in the price of the bike is probably not really all the crazy a number.

As for the cost to maintain... 

Remember this is not like you taking your bike down to the bike shop to get some service.  The bike has to be picked up and taken to the service location and then brought back to the Divvy station.  All of that costs money, probably more money than the service itself does.  Add into that the cost of relocating bikes to meet demand as well as maintenance on the Divvy stations and the per bike cost to maintain the system can get really big really fast.

Know what you are talking about before you start making comparisons about the cost of two entirely different things.


Reboot Oxnard said:


  • ·         The specifications. You may think that a high-end heavy-service bike like the Trek Police bike doesn’t correlate well to the Divvy bike and maybe it doesn’t but is there any meaningful performance difference? Why isn’t a police bike suitable for Divvy use? What is it that makes a bike designed for hard use, a proven design that is mass-produced unsuitable and requiring a substitute that is several/many times as expensive? The police bikes are ridden for more miles/hours/days than the Divvy bikes ever will be in exactly the same environment as the Divvy bikes by people who are undoubtedly better riders but also riding far more aggressively than Divvy bikers. I used the Trek police bike as an example because at $1200 it is a high-end bike – by way of comparison, the Fuji police bike only costs about $600, per. One of the easiest ways to engineer the results of a bid award is to draw the specifications so narrowly that there is only one qualified response available – and that means you can’t rely on a mass-produced nearly commodity product but will must use a unique and, preferably, impossible to duplicate (think copyrights and patents) design.

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