Human Transit

the photo that explains almost everything (updated!)

You've seen photos like this. A large group of people, with images comparing the amount of precious urban space they take depending on the mode of transport they use.  This new one is by Australia's Cycling Promotion Fund.

This photo makes at least three important points, two of them probably not intended.  In this one image you can see that:

• Bike racks on buses (and most other transit) can never be more than a niche market. 

The rack on the bus in pic #1 carries two bikes, which is great for those two people.  But if all the bikes in pic #2 try to get onto the bus in pic #1, we have a geometric impossibility.  Bike racks are already as large as they can be if the driver is still to be far enough forward to drive safely.  A non-folding bike inside a transit vehicle takes the space of several passengers, so could fairly be accommodated only at several times the fare.  In the ideal sustainable future, you will have to park your bike at the station, or return your rental bike, just as Europeans do.  If transit does accommodate your bike, you really should pay a fare premium that reflects the rough number of passenger spaces displaced, or the supply/demand ratio for 2-3 bike racks vs 20 people wanting to use them.

• "Personal Rapid Transit," or small demand-responsive buses, or driverless cars that work like taxis, will never, ever, ever substitute for surface transit in high-demand urban settings, such as where all these people want to travel. 

 Dreamers along these lines may well be right about many suburban areas, where demand is sparse and the land use pattern precludes efficient transit.  But when all the people in this picture want to travel, driverless cars may take less space than the cars shown here, but they will still take far more space than a bus would.  The scarcity of space per person is part of the very definition of a city, as distinct from suburbia or rural area, so the efficiency with which transport options use that space will always be the paramount issue.  

(Of course, this very thought experiment presumes that we will actually achieve, and culturally accept, driverless cars that require very little space between them, in which the prevention of ghastly accidents -- especially with pedestrians and bikes who may appear with zero warning and minimal stopping distance -- is achieved through the absolute infallibility of human-designed hardware and software.)

To make the same point more generally:

• In cities, urban space is the ultimate currency.  

We spend too much time talking about what things cost in dollars and not enough about what they cost in space.  That, of course, is because urban space is perversely priced to encourage inefficient uses of it and discourage efficient ones.  If you're going to claim to be able to visualize how technology will change the world of 2040 -- as the techno-futurists claim to do -- you should also visualize what a political system ruled by people now under 40 would look like.  These people are much less emotionally attached to cars, care about environmental outcomes much more, and value urban space much more than their parents do.  Given that the revolution in urban pricing has already begun (see the London and Singapore congestion charges, and the San Francisco and Auckland dynamic parking systems), isn't it foolish to assume that today's assumptions about how we apportion urban space will still rule your techno-utopia?

UPDATE:  A reader points out one other key point, which is that

• the photo understates the space requirements of bikes compared to the other two.  

Once you put these three systems in motion, the cars and bus will need more space in one dimension -- forward and back.  However, in motion, the mass of bikes will expand in two dimensions, it will need to be both longer and wider for all the bikes to move safely.  This could have been rectified in the photo by consciously spacing the bikes to a distance where riders would feel comfortable at a brisk cycling speed that ensures not only stopping distance but also space for passing.  Masses of cyclists on a recreational ride may all agree to ride in tight formation at the same speed, but in daily life cycling infrastructure must accommodate the the fact that people in a cycling crowd will have different desires and intentions around speed, which affects lateral spacing and stopping distance.

cycling the last mile: an exchange with kyle "one red paper clip" mcdonald

Kyle McDonald, celebrated author of One Red Paper Clip (book, blog), recently had this exchange with me about bicycle access to transit:

Kyle:

Jarrett

I've seen some literature around the web that suggests bike sharing networks may reduce transit use somewhat, but I'm curious to your thoughts/insights on how a bike sharing system can be beneficial to extending the local reach of the network, as a transfer. 

I'm in Montreal and have been blown away with the spontaneity afforded byspur-of-the-moment Bixi rides in virtually any direction since the system's implementation in 2009.  I see people riding to and fro from busy commerical areas and major transit nodes on Bixi bikes all the time, either returning on foot, taxi or transit, depending on the reason of their journey.

I'm following the launch of Citi Bike in NYC and Vancouver's potential launch (currently fuddled behind helmet law and other problems) very closely.  

Curious to know your thoughts on bike sharing systems and how they interact with transit, and can extend access and local reach of existing services, etc.

In my experience, the 400m walk-to-transit norm is more in the order of 1km or 2km with very dense and well-planned bike share network like Bixi in place. 

Surprised you haven't done a bikesharing post on Human Transit yet, as I think they're one of the most exciting and emerging transport technologies for dense urban areas.

Multi-point public bicycling (ie one-way-journeys) is effectively a completely different mode of transport than the private bicycle in terms of usability and integration with transit networks.  (no need to transport bikes on trains or buses, just grab a new one at destination, etc)  

For that matter, the emergence of multi-point car sharing systems like car2go is a fascination phenomenon and brings up some interesting opportunities for transit/walking integration that return-to-the-same-spot services like ZipCar can simply not accomplish. 

I'm of the (under-researched) opinion that these emerging technologies are lowering per-capita car ownership and may have interesting macro effects on public urban transportation as they become more popular and widespread.

Anyhow, I guess I'll repeat myself....curious to know your thoughts on all this stuff!

to which I replied:

Hey Kyle

I completely agree that bikeshare at stations is valuable to both cycling and transit modes! I suppose I haven't posted on it because it's so obvious to me that I'm not sure what to say. 

The key thing to keep in mind about these bike solutions, from a transit standpoint, is that anything that helps transit concentrate its resources on more rapid forms of service -- e.g. by reducing the demand for "last mile" local transit -- is great for transit too, because slower kinds of transit are also more expensive to operate.  So this ties directly to my [suggestion] (see Chapter 5 of my book) to not just expand rapid transit but also shift many local bus lines over to more rapid forms of stop spacing ... so that service runs faster but is worth walking to.

The challenge for using bikeshare in that context, of course, is that the people who feel confident on bikes in the city are also confident as pedestrians.  The challenge is the older or less bike-confident person, some of whom resist walking 200+ meters [to more widely spaced transit stops] as well.  It is for these people that many high-cost-per-passenger local transit services -- in low density areas -- are retained.

Keep in mind that where bikeshare and bike-parking styles of access are needed most is in lower-density development.  This is where transit agencies that are focused on maximum ridership and sustainability benefits for the dollar would benefit from being able to run less service, because any service they run is low ridership and thus high cost per rider.  

So I'd like to see bike parking and bikeshare promoted especially in new lower density areas, and with a focus on being attractive to a wide range of users, not just the athletic younger people who've traditionally driven US bike advocacy.  That means infrastructure that's more about safety than speed, such as you see in Europe.  (As I recall, the "design cyclist" for whom the Dutch design their infrastructure is a 60 year old woman with two bags of groceries.)  This is really easy to do in new suburbia with well-designed off-street paths and connective paths via low-traffic streets.  Canberra, Australia is one city that's long done this kind of infrastructure really well for a long time, though they're only now connecting it to transit.

All the best, Jarrett

Kyle:

I couldn't agree more with you pretty much on all this stuff.

I'm from Vancouver and find it's cycle culture especially militant, pushy and spandex clad to the point of turning the average person OFF cycling.  

Last-mile infrastructure to harbor more mainstream, even boring, cycling is totally necessary!  I've never heard the term "design cyclist" but strongly feel this concept needs more traction in the USA/Canada, especially the 60 year old with two bags of groceries......that's pretty much my mom!

(I should add that I don't necessarily endorse Kyle's implied critique of all "militant, pushy, and spandex clad" cyclists. The tension between slow and fast cycling is a fact of the cultural moment, one that calls for some tolerance on all sides ... But I appreciate where Kyle's coming from here.)

email of the week: more bike racks on buses?

A reader asks:

Do you have any examples of buses that can take several bikes rather than just two on the front?  I suggested at the Velovillage conference that transit companies run a competition for designs to put more bikes on buses.  Where i live, many people are left by the side of our roads or at the main bus stop unable to board or have to leave their bike behind.

There are ways to fit another bike or two in. Seattle's King County Metro, pictured, is up to three.

But when you consider the real problem, on-board bus racks cannot possibly be the long-term answer.  Obviously, bus drivers hate anything that reduces their visibility, including downward at something or someone that they're about to run over.  The broader issue is simply that bikes take space, even when they're outside the bus frame, and taking that space has consequences. 

For example, exterior bike racks increase the length of the bus.  That means the bus needs a longer bus stop zone, needs more room to turn, etc., and this can easily make the difference in whether a bus line can get through a tight spot where its service is needed, or has to make a detour around it.  Small racks are widely accepted in North America now, but in the long run it should be obvious that bike racks on buses only work if they're not very popular.  The long term solution has to be a range of bike parking and bike rental stations at stations.  This is what you'll see in bicycle-dominated countries in Europe.

lamentation: bicycles vs transit?

From a correspondent in Portland:

Among my peer group [educated people in their 20s-30s] I see a "mono-modal" fixation on cycling, very similar to the attitude many drivers have that their primary mode should be everyone's primary mode. It really is remarkable how many young, affluent, educated folks living in inner Portland see cycling as the only legitimate travel mode for all people everywhere. My [peers] basically scoff at the idea that I might prefer to take the bus to and from school when it is rainy or dark out. I see walking, biking, and transit as three completely complementary modes that support a car-free or car-light lifestyle, but I'm realizing that in Portland at least there is a large group of people in the cycling community who see both cars and buses as the enemy, or at least not an option worth considering or supporting. This might help explain TriMet's underinvestment in the bus network, since politically active young people do not support transit.

I've been away from Portland too long to have my own impression, but if this is true it's certainly unfortunate.  While there are some conflicts between bicycles and transit in road design, I have always tried to accommodate both.  I don't necessarily believe bike lanes can be accommodated on every street, any more than transit is, but I do think both cycling and transit deserve and can have complete and functional networks. 

How common is a monomodal fixation on bicycles?  If so, why does it occur?

There's nothing wrong with cycling advocacy, or advocacy of any mode, until it becomes hostile toward other aspects of the full sustainable transport package.  Wouldn't advocacy for the suite of sustainable transport options (walking, cycling and transit, supplemented by carsharing etc.) be more effective than endless conflicts among these modes?

has anyone ridden a yike-bike?

More under-the-radar cleverness from the country that commercialised the bungee-jump:

YikeBike is a statement about using smart technology to solve the problems of our increasingly congested, polluted, stressful cities. It is the first commercial expression of the mini-farthing concept, created up by a bunch of successful entrepreneurs, engineers and dreamers. We sat down to try and answer:

•  What is the simplest way to get from A to B with the aid of a machine?
•  What is the smallest wheel you can have to get a stable, safe, comfortable ride?
• Can you make something small enough to be able to go with you anywhere in a city?
• Wonder if we could make a unicycle dramatically easier to ride and fold?

We were intrigued by creating something that could dramatically change urban transport, enabling city dwellers a fast, safe and easy way to navigate their environment.

The result was the mini-farthing concept and its first expression, the YikeBike. It employs state-of-the-art technology, engineering and industrial design to create a new class of personal transport.

I continue to wonder whether we might see a technology so lightweight and reliable that it would become universal for short-distance travel to the point of eliminating the need for local bus services -- at least in low-density markets.  I'm not sure this is it.  Recycling a 19th century idea, though, is certain appealing.

Downside: It starts at US $3595, so we're a bit away from mass production.

bicycle vs transit problems

Bicycles have always had an anxious relationship with local-stop street-running transit, both bus and streetcar.  On a street without separate bike lanes, bikes and local-stop transit tend to end up sharing the "slow" traffic lane -- typically a lane that's either next to the curb or next to a row of parked cars.  The difficulty lies not just in the obvious ability of rail tracks to throw a cyclist, but more generally in the fact that many cyclists like to move at something close to the average speed of local-stop transit -- generally 10-20 mph.  With buses at least, the pattern is often for a local bus and a cyclist to "leapfrog," passing each other over and over, an uncomfortable and mildly risky move for both parties. 

Streetcars are much less likely to pass a cyclist than a bus is, and this, come to think of it, may be one of the many little reasons that streetcars often end up being slower than buses when you control for other differences (in right of way, fare handling, signaling, enforcement, etc).  Cyclist friends have often told me that they prefer cycling alongside streetcars rather than buses becuase streetcars don't make surprising lateral moves.  This is true, though of course the lateral motion of buses is a normal part of how they get through traffic, and how they often keep moving in situations where a streetcar would get stuck.

Mia Birk has a good article today arguing that bicycles and streetcars can be friends.  So far, though, the only examples she cites of really successful bicycle-transit integration are from streets where there's plenty of space to separate the two modes, such as Portland's King/Grand couplet.  She's involved now in a consulting team looking at how streetcars will interact with cyclists along a proposed line on Seattle's Broadway, and I look forward to seeing what they come up with. 

Birk is clear that the basic design of the starter streetcar lines in Portland in Seattle -- operation in the right-hand (slow) lane next to a row of parked cars -- didn't provide good options for cyclists needing to avoid the hazard of the streetcar tracks.  She wants to see better separation, but when looking at a dense urban street like Seattle's Broadway, it's hard to see how they'll deliver that without undermining either on-street parking or pedestrian circulation.  She notes one situation in Portland (14th & Lovejoy) where the streetcar-cyclist conflict was arguably resolved at the pedestrian's expense:

... and she's clear that this isn't the outcome she's after.  (This idea of a bike lane that passes between a transit stop and the sidewalk is common in the Netherlands.  It can work well as long as there's ample sidewalk width.  It's less nice in situations like this one where the remaining sidewalk is constrained.)

If I sound a little cynical about the prospects for harmony between local-stop transit and cyclists, it's because this is a geometry problem, and geometry tends to endure in the face of even the most brilliant innovation.  The examples in Mia's post seem to confirm that if the street is wide enough, it's easy to separate cycles and transit, but that if it isn't, it isn't. 

When the problem is this simple, it's not hard to reach a point where you're sure you've exhausted all the geometric possibilities.  At that point, you to make hard choices about competing goods, producing something that all sides will see as a compromise.  Hoping for new innovative solutions can become a distraction at that point, since no innovation in human history has ever changed a fact of geometry. 

Finally, if a streetcar ever does go down Seattle's Broadway, it had better be compatible with buses as well.  Broadway is an important link in the frequent transit network, with lines that extend far beyond the local area and thus make direct links that a starter streetcar line cannot replace.  What will happen to these buses?  If they share the streetcar lane, what will their role be in the streetcar-bicycle dance?

_{Photo: Mia Birk}

email of the week: thinking pedestrian thoughts

Is it useful to talk about "pedestrians" as a group the way we often talk about cyclists or transit riders?  All these category terms are problematic, as I discussed here.  Riordan Frost of Minnesota 2020 asks:

A recent article in a local paper and its connection to one of your previous blog posts has inspired me to write to you. The article is “Thinking Pedestrian Thoughts”, and it covers the recent adoption of a ‘pedestrian plan’ by Edina, which is an inner-ring suburb of the Twin Cities [of Minneapolis and St. Paul]. One of the points made in the article is that people don’t really advocate for themselves as pedestrians. This made me think of a post that you wrote back in October, which was entitled “should I call myself a ‘transit-rider’?” and discussed labels given to people using certain modes of transportation. In the post, you quote Michael Druker, who advocates for switching from ‘cyclist’ to ‘people cycling’ and from ‘pedestrian’ to ‘people walking’.

You agreed with him, but pointed out that these new terms were cumbersome, and you would probably still opt for the shorter terms in your writing. I write blogs and articles for MN2020, and I feel the same way. I understand the importance of what language we choose, and I try to be conscious of it in my writing, but I have a need for brevity and I have an editor. There is a more significant question apart from brevity, however: how do we avoid labels (which may carry negative connotations and/or stereotypes) while advocating for improvements of certain modes? ...

Is it possible to cut down on lumping people into categories and still have effective advocacy for certain modes, like better crosswalks or more bike lanes? The cycling community is pretty well established in the blogosphere, which sometimes contributes to their ["cyclist"] label and its connotations, but pedestrians have no blogs or personalities specifically tailored to them – mostly because we are ... all pedestrians at some point in the day, and there is nothing terribly distinctive about walking. I n a perfect world, we would just design our environments for all modes of transportation that people use, with people (not cyclists vs. motorists vs. pedestrians) in mind.   This doesn’t seem terribly viable, however.  What are your thoughts on this?

I think that the potential for organized activism and fellow-feeling is easier among a group of people who all wield the same tool, because tools are such powerful symbols.  Think about the role of the hammer and sickle -- archetypal tools of manufacturing and agriculture, respectively -- in the imagery of Soviet communism, for example.

The possession of the tool, and the knowledge of how to use it, becomes a feature by which a group defines itself and sets itself in opposition to other interests.

If you don't think this still happens, look at all the clubs and forums for people who own and cherish a particular tool -- a Linux-powered computer, say, or a certain musical instrument.  If you read an online forum about such possessions, you'll see the practical work of exchanging troubleshooting tips also builds a community in which people love hearing each other's stories about life with the cherished tool.

So this is another thing that's going on behind the obsessive attachment to transit technologies.  People who love aerial gondolas or whatever can now network worldwide with every city that runs one, compare notes about each other's problems and achievements, and thus form a global community based on love of that particular tool.  Psychologically, it's just like a club of guys who all own a particular kind of car, or computer, or electric guitar, or whatever.

Pedestrians don't have that.  So I doubt we'll ever see a pedestrians-rights movement that has anything like the shape and force of the cycling movement.  Nor do we need to, really, because the best urban planning thought today is all about the primacy of the pedestrian. 

Ultimately, the strongest case for "pedestrian rights" is that we are all pedestrians.  Even the guy who loves his Porsche has to walk across parking lots, and can thus see the value of having protected paths between rows of cars instead of having to walk in the lot's roadways where a car can back into you.  Even he has a sense of what makes a shopping center or major downtown pleasant or unpleasant to walk in.  Maybe he's even broken down on the freeway and thus experienced what those places are like when you're out of your car.  So it's not hard to make anyone understand a pedestrian issue on analogy to the walking that everyone has to do.  That's how you win these arguments, I think.

sydney: ambitious draft car-sharing policy

The City of Sydney has just released its Draft Car Sharing Policy (Item 4 here).  The Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph has a respectful story here, although the print edition of the same story carried a more lurid headline, "Clover's car wars speed up." 

"Clover" is Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, who has made the City a national leader in sustainable transport policy despite the relatively weak role of local governments in the Australian political system.

It's important to note that the City of Sydney is small -- only 177,000 of greater Sydney's 4.5 million people, consisting of the CBD and innermost, densest neighborhoods.  Even there, public transit isn't all it needs to be, with frequencies as poor as 30 minutes (and no evening service) for trips between inner city activity centres other than the CBD. 

With that in mind, the statistics are looking good.

The growth of car sharing in the City’s area has been extremely rapid. Since 2007, the City has installed more than 190 dedicated car share spaces, catering for approximately 4,000 City residents and 500 City-based businesses. Membership is growing by some 180 residents a month.

It is estimated that the car sharing program has taken at least 550 cars off City streets and reduced on-street parking demand by at least 250 spaces compared to business as usual.

And unlike many governments, the City of Sydney is explicit that rising car ownership is a problem for a city with finite space:

The City of Sydney has the lowest rate of household car ownership in Metropolitan Sydney, at just 0.72 cars per household (in 2006). In many City neighbourhoods, however, household car ownership levels are rising quickly, with serious implications for parking availability, traffic congestion and resource consumption. Increased car sharing can slow growth in household vehicle holdings.

The goal is to raise carshare membership from the current 4000 (out of 90,000 households) to 9000 or 10% of all households.  They estimate that this can be achieved with a car share fleet that would be 1% of the total fleet registered in the city.  In other words, there's the potential to replace the ten cars now owned by ten households with a single shared car.

The City will now require inclusion of car-sharing spaces in new high-rise residential development.  The Sydney Morning Herald grabbed that point as the lede:

ALL large new apartment blocks in inner-city Sydney must have parking spaces for car share vehicles, according to a City of Sydney proposal, the latest move by a council to discourage vehicle ownership.

Large residential blocks will have to include one car share space for every 50 regular spaces under a draft Development Control Plan endorsed by the council's traffic committee last night.

An adequate supply of car-share cars in a high-rise building can reduce the building's overall parking needs, which is a key step toward making high-rise units more affordable.  Residential towers are one setting where car-share vehicles can be closer to home than your own car -- since their reserved spaces will be closer to the elevator than your own car would be.

The division of metropolitan Sydney into more than 40 city governments is mostly a barrier to good planning, but it does have a positive side for the inner city.  With its CBD-driven tax base and exclusively high-density, inner-city population, the City of Sydney has both the resources and the political consensus to drive aggressive change.  There's plenty of controversy about the details; everyone loves cycle lanes, for example, as long as they don't take "my" on-street parking space.  But the broad sustainability context of the City's work, and the need to restrain cars, is not controversial, and given the continued development of high-rise residential, I'd gamble on the city exceeding its target to have 10% of residents in car sharing, even if the costs of car ownership stay roughly the same.

Full disclosure:  I do occasional consulting work for the City of Sydney, but not in the area of car share policy.

should we plan transit for "bikeability"?

As cycling becomes more and more popular, how should transit planning respond?  I've suggested before that better integration of cycling can be crucial to expanding the reach of rapid transit, and possibly eliminating some of the need for less efficient local-stop transit.  That post also attracted great comments from experienced bike+transit riders hammering out the details.

But the details of whether and how much this can work vary a lot from one city to another.

Adam Parast of the University of Washington -- one of the voices behind the excellent Seattle Transit Blog -- recently completed a Portland and Seattle Cycle Analysis.  It compares the cycling potential of these two rather perfectly different cities:

The above drawings are of "current bikeability," which combines changeable things like infrastructure with immutable things like topography.  Adam then looks at how bikeable the cities could be with improved infrastructure -- but not including flattening the hills.

Portland is a valley, and the dense or densifiable parts of the city are mostly flat or gently sloping.  The westernmost part of the city has ferocious hills, but also a much lower density.  The contiguous bike-friendly area of Portland has the vast majority of the city's population and activity, and I think that's a key to Portland's cycling growth and potential.  Portland's geography is much like that of the European cities that it admires, which are mostly either dead-flat like the Dutch cities or built on gentle valley floors, like Freiburg.  It's easy to imagine that an aggressive bicycle infrastructure program could continue to drive Portland's cycling to a point where many people would find they could meet most of the needs of life on a bike, without ever confronting a really steep hill.  

Seattle, by contrast, is a city of obstacles, a labyrinth of hills and water barriers.  This makes the city rich in chokepoints where it's relatively easy to give transit, and bikes, an advantage.  Adam describes this a different way: Seattle, to a cyclist, will always be a series of islands, an archipelago.

Adam could have made this same comparison between mostly-flat Los Angeles and the much more geographically challenged San Francisco Bay Area, or between dead-flat Melbourne and Sydney's undulating landscape of promontories and ravines.  But Seattle really is exceptional, on a global scale, for the density and severity of obstacles that lacerate every part of the city.  As I observed before, nowhere in Seattle can you go more than a few miles in a straight line without plunging into the water or over a cliff. Even the heart of downtown is on a serious slope, such that people often use building elevators to get from 2nd Avenue to 3rd Avenue.  From a transport perspective, it's a ridiculous place to build a city.  But of course, this fine-grained obstructedness is inseparable from what makes Seattle a spectacular and exciting place. 

The image of Seattle as an archipelago suggests that it will need a lot of "boats."  On each "island" pedestrians and cyclists will be able to get around locally without much trouble, but getting from one island to another will be a challenge.  Is it possible to design bike boulevards that will connect all of the islands?  Some effective boulevards already exist, crossing water barriers where the topography is gentle, such as the link north from downtown across the Fremont Bridge.  But many desire lines face huge topography barriers.  It's hard to envision any infrastructure that will make an average cyclist want to ride from downtown to the fortress-like hilltops of West Seattle -- let alone that archetype of Dutch cycling, a 60-year-old woman with two bags of groceries. 

So archipelago cities who want to invest deeply in cycling -- and who want cycling to penetrate the culture beyond the young and athletic -- are going to need some links between these islands.  Perhaps we should be thinking about rapid transit more specifically in those terms.  Perhaps this means that highly obstructed "crossings," such as downtown to West Seattle, should have rapid transit options where you can take your bike on board.  Sound Transit's new Link light rail line is one such, and it usefully connects downtown to the bikeable "islands" of the Rainer Valley and Tukwila.  But elsewhere, Seattle has buses, and the standard bus generally has limited provision for bikes. 

I wonder, in short, if Seattle's very pro-transit mayor should be thinking along lines that would bring cyclist and active-modes interest to the transit agenda.  Light rail is certainly one product that usually allows bikes on board, but does it have to be light rail?  Should Seattle be designing a rapid bus product that integrates with bikes more effectively?  Do we have to focus on taking bikes on board, or can the same need be met by bike hire stations in each "island"?   It's an interesting problem, maybe an important one, and not just in Seattle.