Comment 95990

By KevinLove (registered) | Posted December 13, 2013 at 22:13:57 in reply to Comment 95964

Paris has about 8 bikes per 1,000 residents in the service area. This is far too low, and is dragging Paris down, as may be seen on the graph on Figure 4 on page 46 at:

http://www.itdp.org/documents/ITDP_Bike_...

The redeeming feature in Paris is the large service area, as may be seen on the scatter map on page 43 of the same source. Paris therefore has the largest non-Chinese system, with 16,500 bicycles in service. See Appendix B, same source.

Montreal, with 23 bikes per 1,000 population in the service area, has almost three times the proportion of the population using bike share use as Paris. That is to say, three times the market penetration in Montreal vs. Paris. So much for Paris being a global model!

The bike-share system in Paris is actually a rather poor performer, due to the inadequate number of bicycles in the service area. Still, even at the inadequate Paris rate of only 8 bicycles per 1,000 people, this would translate into 2,200 bicycles in the proposed Hamilton service area.

I believe that basic common sense suggests that 275,000 people in Hamilton are just simply not going to be able to share 650 bicycles. A bike will not be reliably available whenever it is needed. Public transit must be reliable or it is no good.

As to not having $15.7 million, that is peanuts compared to what has been routinely spent in Hamilton on car infrastructure projects. Do I really have to put up a list of car infrastructure projects and what was spent on them?

Even if we only look at the 275,000 population in the service area and assume a 10-year average bike life span, this works out to a not-so-whopping annual cost of $5.71 per person.

Yes, we can afford to change our city for the better for all its people. For a fairly low cost.

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