Economics of Bike Share

This seems to be a pretty objective review of the economics of DC's bike share program:

http://gppreview.com/2014/04/07/beyond-urban-planning-the-economics...

The operating (not capital) costs of the system are 74% recovered by user fees. This was slightly less than for the subway but far better than for the bus system.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Reho on June 9, 2014 at 5:49am

A very interesting article. It will be interesting if someone does something similar for Divvy. The way all these transportation systems use their "operating costs" as a reference point is disingenuous. That's like saying that a car only costs what it takes to fuel, maintain, and license it, without figuring in the cost of the car. Nonetheless, if Divvy can come in somewhere in the spectrum of other forms of public transportation in terms of actual (not "operating") cost, then it or something similar should be viable in Chicago. A lot will depend on how high an amount of unrecovered capital cost is necessary to keep the system going.

I hope someone does a similar article on Divvy when enough data is in, which should be soon.