Jeremy Ogul | Uptown Contributing Editor

San Diego’s new bicycle-sharing program is almost ready to roll, according to representatives from DecoBike, the corporate sponsor of the City’s program.

Disagreements surrounding the placement of bike-docking stations contributed to a delay of more than six months, but nearly all issues have been resolved according to DecoBike representatives, and the company will begin installing the first stations Downtown in early September.

San Diegans will be able to begin using the bikes by Oct. 30, and the six Mission Valley stations will be installed by the end of this year, said David Silverman, DecoBike’s executive representative for San Diego.

DecoBike has agreed to install 180 stations across the city, though the locations of approximately 20 percent of those stations are still being negotiated with property owners and neighborhood advocacy groups, Silverman said.

The DecoBike station locations in Uptown, Greater North Park and Greater Golden Hill have yet to be finalized. Three bike docking stations will be placed in Old Town, including one at the Old Town Transportation Center.

A unique business model

DecoBike recently announced the pricing structure for bike users. Compared to bike-sharing programs in other cities, the program in San Diego is noticeably more expensive, but the San Diego program also comes without any subsidy from the City.

Most bike-sharing programs follow the same general pricing structure: Users pay an access fee — daily, monthly or annually — that allows them to freely remove a bike from the station for up to 30 minutes at a time. If the bike is not returned to a station within 30 minutes, the user must also pay an overage fee, which is usually charged in 30-minute increments.

The daily access fee in San Diego will be $15. By comparison, the daily access fee in New York City is $10; in Austin, Texas it is $8; in Washington, D.C., it is $7; in Minneapolis, it is $6 and in Tel Aviv, Israel, it is $5.

The overage fee in San Diego will be $5. In contrast, the overage fee in New York City and Austin, Texas, is $4; in Washington, D.C. it is $2; in Minneapolis and Tel Aviv it is $1.50.

Thus, a user who buys a one-day pass for San Diego’s DecoBike and takes 32 minutes to return the bike to a docking station would be charged $15 for the pass plus a $5 overage fee, for a total of $20. The same situation in New York City would cost the user $14; in Austin, Texas, it would cost $12; in Washington, D.C. it would cost $9; in Minneapolis it would cost $7.50 and in Tel Aviv it would cost $6.50.

The annual membership is similarly more expensive in San Diego than in other cities: $125 (the first 1,500 members will pay only $99). In New York City, the annual membership is $95; in Austin, Texas, it is $85; in Washington, D.C., it is $75; in Minneapolis, it is $65 and in Tel Aviv it is $70.

Though San Diego’s prices stand out compared to other cities, they are not particularly surprising, considering that San Diego’s program will be entirely funded by user revenues, said Matthew Christensen, survey researcher with the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the UC Berkeley.

Subsidies from local governments in other cities allow their programs to offer artificially low prices compared to San Diego’s DecoBike, Christensen said.

New York City is the only other city with a bike-sharing program that operates entirely on private funding. New York City’s prices are lower than San Diego’s thanks to a $41-million sponsorship deal with Citibike, but the program there is still struggling to stay in the black and is now seeking to change its pricing structure, Christensen said.

“Bike sharing is such a nascent industry that we’re quickly learning how to create an effective business model,” he said. “A lot of these systems can’t be self-sufficient with an annual membership priced under $100 a year.”

Another factor that makes San Diego’s system pricier is that it will operate year-round, whereas programs in cities such as Minneapolis cost less in the winter because no one is using the bicycles in below-freezing temperatures, according to David Silverman, the DecoBike representative.

One thing makes San Diego’s pricing scheme unique, though: the availability of flat-rate rentals. Rather than buying a one-day membership, users can pay $5 to take out a bike for 30 minutes, $7 to take out a bike for one hour or $12 to take out a bike for two hours. For users who pay the flat rate, there is no overage fee as long as the bike is returned within the allotted time period.

“DecoBike has installed bike-sharing programs in three Florida cities where this flat rate option has been proven to be very successful and heavily utilized,” Silverman said.

In exchange for making DecoBike the official bike-sharing partner of the City, DecoBike will pay the City a portion of its profits — a minimum of $1 million over the next 10 years.

Location is key

Unlike Mission Valley and Old Town, nearby Linda Vista will not host any of the 180 bike docking stations, nor will any neighborhood east of 30th Street.

Some have criticized DecoBike and the City for passing over lower-income nieghborhoods such as City Heights and Linda Vista, where residents generally have a greater need for alternative forms of transportation. Since in many cases the City is giving up public land to provide space for the bike sharing stations, the system should benefit residents, said Sam Ollinger, executive director of BikeSD, a non-profit bicycle advocacy organization.

Ollinger noted that many of the stations are being placed in parts of the city with little to no bicycle infrastructure, such as striped bike lanes or separated bike paths. In New York City, Salt Lake City and Washington, D.C., much of the street infrastructure was in place when the bike sharing systems launched, she said.

“Given the publicized opposition to the placement of the bike share hubs and now a fairly original pricing model, I’m very curious to see how this pans out,” Ollinger said.

There is certainly plenty of room to expand. Christensen said that while San Diego’s 1,800 bicycles will make it one of the largest programs in the country, it will still only meet a small amount of demand.

“A city like San Diego could potentially use close to 10,000 bikes,” Christensen said.

That will be difficult, however, without funding from the City, because bike stations in less populous and lower income areas are less profitable, he said.