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| What is City Bike Benchmarking? | |
Public bicycle projects are starting to get attention in many cities around the world: interest has been evoked through the media, initial enquiries are being made, conversations and exploratory studies are beginning to crank up, and a fair amount of thought, discussion and work is starting to go into them. In some cases arrangements are made for an exploratory field trip to a couple of leading projects in Europe, to check out how these systems are actually working on the street and with a view to coming an informed first-step decision on an eventual shared bike project for their own city.
That's all a good start, and we are hopeful as well that the considerable abundance of materials and leads available in this World City Bike - will also help you build your case. That is in fact exactly why we have put it together and are now sharing it with you.
But as you dig in to review the fast expanding body of materials and references, you will doubtless start to realize the complexity of the job before you. As we say, it's not only "one more nice bike project", but a challenge that is considerably more complicated than that. And it will be important to deal early with these complications and opportunities.
Which is where the idea of a low cost, expeditiously done, easy-to-execute, international collaborative peer review and benchmarking exercise such as outlined here may prove useful to you at certain key stages in your development process.
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| Weak point in preparing the way? | |
After having studied, followed, visited and worked with dozens of projects of different types and sizes, different operating contexts, and a wide range of sponsor types over the last two years or so, what we can note from this experience is that the vast majority of those who think that a shared bike project might be a good thing for their community, also seem to think that they can get it right on their own. After all, it's only one more bike project, right?. They then quickly jump into details such as the appropriate size and scale of their project, station strategies, bike types, preferred suppliers, business models, regulatory arrangements, infrastructure strategies, and then on this base start the cycle of discussions and decisions.
We have talked this over at length with a number of colleagues who have been involved in the more successful projects and the leading suppliers, and what we hear from them is that most of the projects that are trying to come online these days are simply not doing the necessary homework to ensure that they get the kind of implementation that is going to do the best job in their particular operational context. It is for this reason that we are seeing so many troubled and underperforming projects, and so many others that are not getting into the operational stages.
The people who know most about how to make these projects work are (a) those teams and their direct associates that have already done it right (very few in number) and (b) the leading suppliers. But since the former are generally fully taken up with managing their projects (and shared bike projects are management intensive as you will see the day you get yours up and running), and the latter are mainly concerned with getting your business, it may be useful to tap expert counsel as you move ahead. (Moreover, the leading suppliers continue to tell us that their clients are coming to them in most cases without having done their basic homework properly, so they are obliged to respond to the clients' predetermined wish list and expectation.)
It is for this reason that a careful expert benchmarking -you may wish to think of this as a type of independent demand side audit - has to be carried out, and that this needs to be backed up with solid expertise in the sector. As will be seen here this does not have to be an overly costly or time-consuming exercise, but a few days at most a few weeks of careful independent expert support will more than justify the time and cost once your system is up and doing the job it needs to do in your community.
| When might you want to consider a benchmarking exercise? | |
Experience shows that there are at least four critical stages in the life cycle for a public bike project where these kinds of independent expert reviews can be most useful to your team, namely:
- At start-up: When you are first starting to look into this as a possible serous policy option for your city. The goal at this decisive early point is to make a fully informed initial decision: Do we go ahead? Or will we do better to give it a miss? There are solid experience-based criteria available to make these decisions. And if a positive conclusion is reached, what then is going to be the best way to organize the first full stage of preparatory work needed to take this eventual project the next important stage. A little first-hand experience and peer dialoguing can go a long way here.
- For RFP preparation and pre-vetting: Some months later, when your ground work has been laid and plans are well advanced, and you are just about to move into the RFP Stage. Ideally this review will be engaged before the local team has fully narrowed its options and choices. The goal of the review process at this critical point will be to draw to your attention ideas and issue that may have gotten overlooked, and perhaps options that should be explored before actually finally and issuing the formal call for proposals.
- In support of supplier selections and contract negotiations. This is a critical period, and a few small tweaks here may turn out to be very important in the longer run. This is the document, and the negotiations that follow,
- First interim performance review: And finally after your project has been up and running for some months. It's up, it's running, and now what? Let's have a look together.
Each of these review processes needs to be carried out in close cooperation with the leading local actors, who in the early stages may be outside groups, consultants, local business associations, or user, environment, media or public interest groups. But once the project gets underway the main working contact is normally with the responsible implementing agencies, more often than not directly associated with or reporting to the city council or mayor's office.
| Organizing the benchmark process | |
The local partner gets in touch and we get together by whatever combination of phone, email, Skype and videoconferencing to lay the base in terms of the main objectives for the review, timetable, specific review criteria, and to identify the various materials that are going to be needed here for our review team to do the job.
From this end we work best if the materials turned over to us are reasonably succinct, especially in the early stages of the cycle in which the important issues and decisions are mainly strategic and often conceptual. Then as the project proceeds the level of detail increases proportionately. We will provide shortlists of the materials and other forms of information that we counsel in order for the job to be handled in a crisp and creative (and appropriately interactive) manner.
And even in the earliest stages we like to have good area maps which show things like topography, land use, population and activity densities, transport infrastructure, trip data, local transit services and stops, weather maps, parking provision, bike paths and parking, etc. And as you can well imagine it will be useful if we have access to the key statistical data on the city: transport, economic, social and other.
It is helpful to have information both on what is thought to be the main service areas (normally the center city), but also to get a feel for the situation in the greater urban area, including in smaller outlying communities that may in time become part of a larger project.
Why this level of detail? Because this the critical background, and will in any event be part of your preparatory process. (There is no other way to do it!) So if you can form the beginning share with us what you have or are collecting, it will allow us to be most useful to you. (Including eventually to counsel you to make sure that you bring other factors and data into the planning process.)
The WCBC benchmarking unit, who will review the city team's presentation and materials with a fine tooth comb, ask questions, turn around the issues with the local project team, and eventually (within days) provide them with a crisp write-up of our recommendations and guidelines for next steps.
Our team will be looking for things you may have overlooked, tweaks that we believe will help to enhance the quality of your project and the process behind it.
| Quick reminder: What is a City Bike is NOT | |
We have to be sure that we are fully agreed on this since it may not be immediately self-evident. A city bike program is best thought of in strategic terms not as "one more good bike project". But rather it is . . . .
- a significant public transport project;
- a roads and infrastructure project of some dimensions;
- a public health project in a time of need;
- a city center economic development project;
- a climate project that really can make a difference; and
- an exercise in deep democracy and active citizenry
Now these are hardly trivial distinctions. Because at the end of the day these are going to be the main context and the central deciding issues (once you have got the bike part right, which today is ever less of a challenge given the espanding array of serious qualified partners out there for you to work with) and the scales of resources needed to deal with the project's challenges. It is, to repeat, not just one more nice bike project. It's a city-transformation project, a leading edge to more to follow to create the mobility systems needed for sustainable cities.
| Teamwork | |
This approach keys on mutual respect, team work and good communications. Each of the partners involved has their own arias of competence, and both sides must understand in advance that they are going to learn things and that decisions that are made are going to have to be made together.
Likewise the confidentiality of the process is important, and clear guidelines need to be worked up so that there are no surprises later. We don't like surprises, and are rather sure that you don't either.
| Strict neutrality | |
Our role is to be fully informed about how such projects are being handled at the leading edge, but at the same time to remain fully neutral in terms of our recommendations for your project.
Thus for example, while we feel that properly designed public bike projects can make a real contribution in a very wide range of cities, we also feel strongly that hastily designed projects that do not adequately reflect the unique conditions of the local environment should be either set aside or modified to take into account these realities. It does no one any good or credit to have an under-performing or failed city bike project on your hands. (And we can point to some striking examples of exactly this if you wish. We do not want your city to be among them.)
Another instance in which full neutrality is critical will be in our counsel on the selection of your eventual implementation partners, and the contractual arrangements you make with them. We know and respect the leading players in this field, and we also favor the idea of bringing in new and smaller groups with new ideas and competences to the extent possible and appropriate. But we maintain a rigorous "level playing field" approach in all our work, and this is one of the important points in any counsel that we give to considering cities. The CITY is our client.
| Next steps | |
Get in touch by phone or email and we can begin to examine how this might best be done. You have our full coordinates here.
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