Making Biking Convenient

An Introduction to the Fostering Behavior Change Minute

Over the last thirty years I have been writing and speaking about Community-Based Social Marketing (CBSM). CBSM is an alternative to the information intensive campaigns that are frequently used to promote environmental, health, and safety behaviors.??CBSM is now used globally as the basis for numerous behavior change initiatives. In this newsletter, the?Fostering Behavior Change Minute, I will introduce you to community-based social marketing and how knowledge from the behavioral sciences will enable you to deliver far more effective programs.

Making Biking Convenient

Amsterdam launched the first bike-sharing program in 1965. This first foray into communal bike-sharing did not fare well, as the bikes were quickly stolen or vandalized. However, fifty-seven years later, bike-sharing programs are being implemented in cities worldwide. The current generation of bikes are durable and traceable, significantly reducing the problems plaguing early bike-sharing initiatives. According to Meddin, there were "nearly 10 million shared bikes and 3,000 bike-sharing systems across the world" as of August 2021.? The Paris bike-sharing program, Velib, recorded an astounding 215,000 trips on on one single day in 2020.??

The concept is disarmingly simple. Bikes are provided at convenient stations or locations, such as the one shown below. Users register at a station or online to use the bikes. Registrations can be for as short as a day or as long as a year. Once registered, riders either enter a code, swipe a registration card, or use their phone to obtain a bike, which they then drop off at another station or leave parked on the sidewalk close to their destination. Bikes not returned within 24 hours are considered stolen and are charged to the user's credit card.

Bike-sharing programs have several target audiences, perhaps the most important of which are commuters. Even the most extensive mass-transit systems can only get commuters so close to their destination. Bike-sharing allows commuters to travel the last mile quickly and conveniently. Additional target audiences include commuters who have driven to work but then use the bikes for short trips. Finally, tourists are frequent users, particularly in cities such as Paris.

Most bike-sharing programs are franchises in which a company runs the program for a municipality in return for being able to sell advertising that is placed at the stations or on the bikes themselves.

The Bixi system in Montreal, which is pictured here, is intriguing. Stations are solar-powered and can be set up in just twenty minutes. Furthermore, these stations are mobile and can be moved to different locations as demand requires, providing a flexibility that few other transportation programs can match.

While the impact of bike-sharing programs on emissions can be challenging to ascertain, as it is uncertain that trips taken by bike are displacing vehicle trips, the distance traveled by bike is extraordinary. In Paris alone, users of the Velib system make several million trips each month.

In next week's Minute I'll discuss further the importance of convenience in fostering behavior change.

Early-bird registration is now available for my virtual workshops in early June for North America and late May for Oceania. Details for the North American training can be found here , while information for Oceania is here . Please note that we have a limited number of places available at our early-bird prices. I've drafted an email that you can use to persuade a supervisor to allow you or a colleague to attend (the North America email is here , and the Oceania email is here ). Group rates for five or more attendees from one agency are available for both workshops (contact me for details on group rates).

Thanks for reading this week. Take care and stay safe.

Best, Doug

? https://www.pbsc.com/blog/2021/10/the-meddin-bike-sharing-world-map

?? https://www.velib-metropole.fr/en_GB/service