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Permalink Reply by Ryan Lakes on October 7, 2013 at 11:00am

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.

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Permalink Reply by Tom Dworzanski on October 7, 2013 at 11:35am

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

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Permalink Reply by Michael Hulburt on October 7, 2013 at 12:05pm

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:

 

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Permalink Reply by Doug Haynes on October 7, 2013 at 12:16pm

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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Permalink Reply by Ryan Lakes on October 7, 2013 at 1:10pm

Again, regional identity.

Without doing research I can pretty safely assume that each of those cities including ours has organizations with engineering, product design, computer programming, marketing and project management programs whose reason for existing is to equip people with the skills necessary to pull off a complex projects like bike share. Each city would likely have no trouble finding locals who'd jump at the chance. For instance, notoriousDUG has a pretty rock solid understanding of the Alta bike design features, I think you'd agree, and he may be just one among many. 

Research on how other cities pulled it off (or messed it up) prior, not 100% replicas, would help to make sure the fewest possible mistakes were made while a unique take on how to solve the problem was designed and implemented. That's plenty of people's idea of fun and the kind of thing that makes traveling to another city worthwhile. It's also the kind of thing that employs the people that live here.

Michael Hulburt said:

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:

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.

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Permalink Reply by S on October 7, 2013 at 3:43pm

Regional identity?  So would you suggest that the city hire local companies to do everything the next time it needs to build infrastructure?  Basically find local companies so that it everything needed for the construction project could be built from raw materials that are shipped in?  How about the L or buses, should the city do something similar?  

I think you're vastly underestimating the risks inherent in building something like this especially in regards to the software and customer facing components.  Building the bikes and stations locally would be tough enough but history is full of software development projects that have come in way overbudget and years past deadlines or which have simply not worked.   The divvy system needs a complete billing/accounting system, a tracking system tied into gps sensors in the bikes, monitoring systems at the docks and customer keyfobs.  Getting this to work together and then adding a website for users to use as well as backend systems to monitor and schedule vans to rebalance the bike stations is a pretty big undertaking especially when you need to deal with thousands of people using the system on a continual basis.  It's easy to see why the city went with a company with experience in implementing this and a working system that they can reuse. 

My question to you is how much more would you be willing to pay to get this implemented locally?  E.g. would you think it'd be okay to spend 10x what Divvy costs to do it locally?  

Ryan Lakes said:

Again, regional identity.

Without doing research I can pretty safely assume that each of those cities including ours has organizations with engineering, product design, computer programming, marketing and project management programs whose reason for existing is to equip people with the skills necessary to pull off a complex projects like bike share. Each city would likely have no trouble finding locals who'd jump at the chance. For instance, notoriousDUG has a pretty rock solid understanding of the Alta bike design features, I think you'd agree, and he may be just one among many. 

Research on how other cities pulled it off (or messed it up) prior, not 100% replicas, would help to make sure the fewest possible mistakes were made while a unique take on how to solve the problem was designed and implemented. That's plenty of people's idea of fun and the kind of thing that makes traveling to another city worthwhile. It's also the kind of thing that employs the people that live here.

Michael Hulburt said:

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:

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.

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Permalink Reply by Ryan Lakes on October 7, 2013 at 3:47pm

To me, the idea that taxpayers don't have confidence in our own community's ability to accomplish something as simple as a bikeshare project is a little depressing and I hope it isn't true. It also means that whoever they do have confidence in and hire will get the profits. Chicago is big enough and smart enough. I hope that in the future we can see the logic in investing in ourselves more often.

I suspect that a reason that we may not is that we're still wounded from having so grossly over-invested in automobile infrastructure. Hesitant, in debt and can't keep the stuff in good repair.

I totally support the decision to implement the bike sharing program in Chicago and am sure it will add value to our city. I just wish we'd cranked out our own version as an almost recreational activity for those involved, in good style and in a uniquely Chicago style.

Jeff Schneider said:

Montreal did that to create Bixi.  In Chicago today,  I highly doubt there would be support for risking taxpayer's money to create a competing system, which would probably have to be sold to other cities to recoup the investment.

Ryan Lakes said:

Again, regional identity.

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Permalink Reply by Ryan Lakes on October 8, 2013 at 6:33am

David Moore, your response, kicking my butt up and down the street, was awesome. Somehow it got deleted, here it is edited:

"Dude, quite living in the clouds (david, I live in the clouds, man). Starting from scratch on a bike share system, just to say "Made in Chicago" is such a misplaced priority as to be almost laughable. I don't mean to be a (butthead), but come on. When you are spending millions, you want results, not warm fuzzies. Not "well...it wouldda been cool". Save that loveable loser nonsense for the Cubs (.. I got no love for sports -rl).

Alta is far and away the most qualified vendor for major bikesharing, probably in the world. And it's not like they are just going to give away their years of bikeshare knowledge because some city wants to "shop local". And your assertion that bikeshare at this scale is "simple" (To me, the idea that taxpayers don't have confidence in our own community's ability to accomplish something as simple as a bikeshare project is a little depressing and I hope it isn't true.) really shows that you're wearing some rose colored glasses. Bikeshare at this scale is incredibly complicated.

Bike share has been slowly developing since the 60's. Ths wasn't something that Alta invented last year, it's something that lots of different companies and municipalities have tried to get right over the years (and failed), and Alta has proven themselves as one of, if not the best at it. Bikeshare at this scale is not something that some other outfit is just going to replicate overnight if they just have a "can do attitude" and enough gumption! We could do it ourselves, sure, (as a city I guess), by spending crazy amounts of money and taking 2,3,4 times as long to implement, (with probably many times over the number of glitches and bugs), all while the critics feasted on the faltering program like jackles on a wounded wildebeast. But f that.

We wanted it done as well as possible and for as cheaply as possible, and that would not be possible by starting over with a conglomerate of local but unproven vendors, subcontractors, etc.. Trust me, for all his bitching and moaning, Josh Squire and Bike Chicago have done, they could never have handled a contract or project of this size. All that would have happend is the project would have just been tied up in neverending delays, it would have become a punching bag for every anti bike/ anti city crank out there and probably would have ended in a lawsuit against Bike Chicago and the contract being stripped from them and awarded to someone else anyway, if we'd been lucky. No thanks. They already spoiled the contract and made us wait a year, knowing there was no way they were going to sore loser their way into getting the contract, which shows you the level of professionalism and business accumen they had. All they did was allow New York to get the jump on us and implement their program before ours. Think about that the next time you want to prioritize local pride over results."

Sure, that's the reality of the situation and what would likely have been the outcome if we'd broken the mold and tried our own, but I still hold to the concepts that I've communicated. 

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