NYC's Bike Share Program

New York Bike Share lawyer

Soon 10,000 bikes will be added to NYC in it's new Bike Sharing Program: New York is pedaling hard to join the world's growing love affair with the bicycle. With 350 kilometers of new bike lanes put down since 2007, bringing the total to 683 miles (1,100 kilometers) and a target of 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometres) by 2030, according to Mayor Mike's Office.

This summer, 10,000 bikes deployed in the world's third largest bike-sharing scheme after Hangzhou in China and Paris. http://nycitybikeshare.com/. The Program will be run by Alta and funded by private sponsorship and user fees, not taxpayer dollars. Bike Share membership will be inexpensive (less than one monthly MetroCard), and bikes will be available 24/7, every day.

The city has rolled out demonstrations in Union Square to get their first glimpse of the colourful bicycles, and ongoing demonstrations will continue throughout the year. The bicycles will be stationed every few blocks in Manhattan and available around the clock, with smartphone apps available to inform users of availability.

After paying the annual subscription, rides will be free for trips of less than 45 minutes, at which point a fee will kick in.

So far the Bike Share Looks Safe for its Participants.

One will have to assume that with all these additional bikes and inexperienced riders, the number of accidents and crashes involving the bike share program will be high. Howver, the opposite looks to be true. Paris’s Vélib’ is perhaps the most sucessful bike-sharing program in the world. Launched in 2007 with 20,000 bikes, its widespread popularity not only transformed how Parisians traveled across their city but also helped to model other programs around the world. “The accident rate is lower on a Vélib’ than on ‘normal’ bikes,” a spokesperson for the office of Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë told Streetsblog. In 2009, the most recent year for which data is available, Vélib’ riders were responsible for one-third of all bike trips in Paris but were involved in only one-fourth of all traffic crashes involving a bicycle.

In London where they employ the Barclays Cycle Hire system, so far, after 4.5 million trips, no bike-sharing user in London has been seriously injured or killed in a traffic crash, according to Transport for London.

Crunching those numbers, no people were seriously injured or killed on the first 4.5 million trips on Boris Bikes, while about 12 people are injured for every 4.5 million trips on personal bikes. And over 1.6 million trips, ten bike-sharing users received non-serious injuries, compared to an average of 35 such injuries for the same number of trips on personal bikes.

In Washington D.C.’s Capital Bikeshare system, the bike-sharing users had a much safer rate of crashes than bike owners. In its first seven months of operation, Capital Bikeshare users made 330,000 trips. In that time, seven crashes of any kind were reported, and none involved serious injuries. In comparison, there were 338 cyclist injuries and fatalities overall in 2010, according to the District Department of Transportation, with an estimated 28,400 trips per weekday, 5,000 of which take place on a Capital Bikeshare bikes.

So while only seven bike-sharing riders were injured in 330,000 trips, on average, 13 people riding personal bikes are injured over the same number of trips. And bike-sharing riders suffered no serious injuries, while riders using their own bikes suffered injuries that were sometimes serious or even fatal.

In other systems, apples-to-apples comparisons with personal bike riders are impossible, but extremely low injury rates among bike-sharing riders still stand out.

The Public Health Law Center at William Mitchell College of Law, recently published an article on limiting liability for bike Share Programs. It offers programs on ways to limit bike share liability such as waivers, require riders to wear helmets and to purchase liability insurance to protect the program from lawsuits. They also suggest that keeping the bikes well maintained and educating riders on bike safety will also reduce liability risks of bike share accidents.

If you are invloved in an accident while using a bike share bike, you need an New York Attorney who is also a cyclists and understands the risks New Yorkers face on the Streets. if you or a loved one was invloved in a bike or cycle accident or crash while riding a bike share bike, contact us today at 1-866-Flanzig or emial us at info@NewYorkbikelawyer.com