This week, the second batch of Ofos bikes dropped on Camden. The bikes, a pilot project to see if a dockless bike share could work in Camden (as well as, hopefully, expand to smaller cities with different bike constituencies), has been a mixed success.
The rollout received a fair bit of fanfare — but also pointed to the conceptual challenges of the bike share in a small city with serious challenges. A Wall Street Journal article went fishing for a quote to reflect these challenges (I heard from other folks that the reporter asked leading questions to them, and they wouldn’t bite on this line of questioning) and eventually landed on this one: “It’s Camden,” [a Rutgers sophomore] said. “There’s not a lot to do.”
The quote is cringingly bad — as too often happens in discussions of Camden, it erases both people and neighborhoods outside of the downtown. But the quote is also indicative of the challenge of a bike share in a small city — the constituencies that often fuel such shares (last mile commuters, tourists etc) may not exist in large enough numbers to be the base constituency of the bike share. Can a bike share in a small city function based on community usage?
In that question is also an opportunity. The Ofo bike share in Camden is remarkably cheaply priced, and there is an option for community residents that’s even cheaper.
The early returns were good. Camden residents, particularly youth, loved the bikes. The bright yellow bikes became a cool item — mixing with a summer culture of doing bike tricks and RV tricks. Others used them to commute. They were spread across neighborhoods. In mid-May, I walked my dog through North Camden, Lanning Square and beyond — I counted 13 different Camden residents on Ofo bikes. They were everywhere.
Until they weren’t. A post made its way around social media claiming to be able to “unlock” the bikes for relatively cheap. Others reported that bikes were being locked to front steps or in backyards. As it became harder to find bikes on the app, they became a less reliable means of transportation and the complaints grew louder.
I checked the app four or five times in the weeks prior to the start of the second stage of the Ofo bikes. There were a few bikes in the system, but rarely close enough to where I was to be useful, and never in high enough numbers that I felt confident a bike would be close for a return trip. The bikes simply disappeared.
As the bike share enters stage two, with a second round of bikes dropped in the city, the share has important questions — but also a great opportunity. As I’ve heard more concerns about the bikes leaving circulation, the big success have gotten lost. These bikes are getting used throughout the community — they’re resonating with commuters, youth, and residents in neighborhoods with limited access to public transportation. In a community that has challenging commutes and public health issues, that is a wonderful development.
The key, now, is to keep it going. That likely means avoiding overreacting to early struggles to keep bikes on the street, but also an affirmative effort to build the kind of trust and habits in the community that make a bike share work. For a while, that probably means more affirmative action to ensure that bikes are being left (or moved to) better places, a better security system on the bikes themselves, and some educational/informational work in the community.
But don’t let the promise get lost in the complaints. These bikes are already a big success in important ways. Much development in Camden fails to deeply reach into neighborhoods and communities. These Ofo bikes have done so, both on a practical and a cultural level. That’s worth celebrating, and it’s worth working hard to make sure it continues.
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