Tuesday 21 December 2010

Thursday 9 December 2010

The DGDW Blog: How Green is Bike Sharing?

The DGDW Blog: How Green is Bike Sharing? :
A knee-jerk analysis would say yes – you are exchanging a CO2 free bike for gas guzzler – therefore, it has be greener from a carbon emissions point of view. However, based on the city government’s numbers, few Bicing members are actually switching their car for a bicycle – in most cases they would of been just taking other forms of public transportation or walking, which means negligible carbon savings.

Thursday 2 December 2010

Sunday 24 October 2010

Münchenierung: "Perspective of cycling as barrier or facilitator"

Interesting article on  Münchenierung: "Perspective of cycling as barrier or facilitator"
Interesting stuff in the 'upcoming section of the Academic Journal Transport Policy. A Australian study found qualitative evidence for the fact that the public perspective of cycling can be an important barrier or facilitator on the road towards more urban cycling in cities.
 and
 One example is Barcelona, where due to the Bicing plan, suddenly massive amounts of cycling Catalonians were on the streets, reinforcing the claim for more and safer infrastructure (even the car lobby wanted the critical mass of cyclists of their roads!).


Thursday 21 October 2010

new real time bicing map

Check out this new map http://oobrien.com/vis/bikes/?city=barcelona , it includes animation of the last 48 hours and bike sharing information from other cities.

It also uses openstreetmap, which is nice.

via streetsblog

Saturday 18 September 2010

El Periodico: BCN insiste en multar a ciclistas infractores con retirada de puntos

I am all for enforcing driving laws, but this seems a bit harsh. I also wonder when they are going to start enforcing the speed and stop lights laws in Barcelona for cars and motorcycles. Every few weeks I see an accident involving scooter riders who jumped the lights.
I guess bicing riders are easier to catch though, maybe they will start to go after jay walking next.

El Periodico: BCN insiste en multar a ciclistas infractores con retirada de puntos:
The municipality of Barcelona is confirming their requests for sanction withdrawal of driving license points for cyclists offenders. The mayor has denied the appeal of Cristina Cuní, Bicing user who drove against the traffic direction on a street near  Palau Reial, and asked that they not be penalized in this way because she still has no driver's license. The municipality does not accept the request of the young to reconsider the high financial penalty of 500 Euro.

Friday 3 September 2010

Pedal Power: The World’s Five Bike-Friendliest Cities - Tonic

Pedal Power: The World’s Five Bike-Friendliest Cities - Tonic: "4. Barcelona, Spain: Take a Bike, Leave a Bike General population: 1.6 million Biking population: More than 30,000 Barcelonese commute by bicycle."

Thursday 2 September 2010

TreeHugger: When Bike Sharing Falters (and Why We Can't Let It)

TreeHugger examines the drop of bicing usage in the last year. Some interesting statistics in that article. TreeHugger: When Bike Sharing Falters (and Why We Can't Let It):
Consider the statistics. While in 2009, Barcelona added 10% more kilometers to its bike paths, trips by bike dropped 5.6% percent from 2008's "high" of 1.39 to just above 1%.

Wednesday 25 August 2010

How IT Can Help the World Go Oil-Free | Greenpeace International

How IT Can Help the World Go Oil-Free | Greenpeace International:
Barcelona’s popular Bicing service was recently enhanced by the addition of an iPhone app, which uses GPS to pinpoint the user’s location and help them find a convenient bike station for pick-up or drop-off, saving time on both ends. The app also displays Google Maps with interactive navigation. In the first two months alone, the program registered over 30,000 users.

Wednesday 11 August 2010

The bicing system upgrade didn't go as well as hoped...

Yesterday bicing tried to upgrade the computer system of the stations and the website, but had to revert to the old version after discovering problems. Annoying as this is, it does not really surprise anyone dealing with computers. The news sites see it as a bigger problem though:
While they are upgrading, I have a wishlist:
  • RSS feed for their bicing news
  • API to access the station data (current and historical)
  • Bring the English version back
  • Better and faster station map on their website, should include bicycle lanes too
Well, I can dream.




Thursday 5 August 2010

U.N. Plot To Destroy America With Bike-Sharing Programs

Via HuffingtonPost.com from the Denver Post : American politicians are always good for a laugh:

Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's policies, particularly his efforts to boost bike riding, are "converting Denver into a United Nations community."
"This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed," Maes told about 50 supporters who showed up at a campaign rally last week in Centennial.
...
"This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms,"

Wednesday 4 August 2010

The police is keeping an eye on cyclists this summer.

There are controls all over town, so be care not to skip a red light (which you shouldn't do anyway). I wish they would take that much attention of the motorists. El Periodico also has an article about it.

Controls on Passeig de Sant Joan on Tuesday

Tuesday 27 July 2010

bicing is doing better, but for higher costs - adn.es

ADN has an article with some statistics about bicing:
As a result of the improvements, complaints and claims have fallen by 53%, with an average of 12.8 per 10,000 uses. Calls received in the service number to the subscriber have fallen by 32%. Now receive an average 29 707 per month and in 2009 was 43 623.
They also mention that usage and theft has fallen, but the overall costs have increased.

Friday 23 July 2010

£140m bike hire scheme is the most expensive in Europe | News

£140m bike hire scheme is the most expensive in Europe | News
At £6 for two hours, Boris hire bikes are costliest in Europe Ross Lydall 23.07.10 Sponsored links Critics today raised concerns about the high cost of hiring a bike under the central London scheme being introduced by Boris Johnson.
As in Barcelona the critics come out of the woodwork. As with house prices, groceries and other living costs you can't compare the prices. £45 seems a lot but is still cheap if you compare it to Tube or bus prices. What people also tend to forget: however rubbish a bike sharing service is, it is always better than not having it.

London Barclays Cycle Hire - How It Works

The London bike sharing program Barclay Cycle has a few videos up on youtube. Here is one to introduce the service:

Wednesday 5 May 2010

Experience Bike Week through Twitter

Bike Week is coming:
Bike Week is getting ready to offer, from 10 to 16 May, a whole host of free, bike-related activities. This year's novelty is that you'll be able to follow the event through Twitter, which shows just what a big part bikes have been playing on social networks.
The Councillor insisted that Bicing marked a before and an after in the way bikes are used, as it has created "a constant image of this form of transport and encouraged people to get out on their bikes", to the point where 65% of journeys are now made on private bikes and 35% on Bicing bikes.
More on bcn.es

Tuesday 6 April 2010

new bicing website

I just noticed that bicing has a new website. Some of it doesn't seem to work and they are still using the old map, which is rather horrible slow. And the news page still has no RSS feed. So nothing new really, lets hope they are still working on it.


Wednesday 10 March 2010

google maps now does directions for bicycles

At the moment they just do it for the US, but I hope this will come to Europe too. They also include trail data, which makes it even more useful. In combination with bicing this could be a brilliant tool for Barcelona.


Sunday 31 January 2010

No more bicingwatch API

I decided to stop api.bicingwatch.com, because it was too much work for too few visitors.

I have uploaded the source code to github, where you can also find a recent dump of the data. The data covers more than one year of statistics, which might be useful for other projects.

You can find the project here: http://github.com/christofdamian/api.bicingwatch .

I might pick it up in the future again, if I find the time.