MCDecaux / Cyclocity
For local governments looking to ease traffic, revitalise their downtowns and promote healthy lifestyles, French advertising giant JCDecaux has a green solution. Its Cyclocity self-service bicycle-sharing scheme, begun in 2007 in Lyons, is thriving in 65 cities around the world.
Now the company has brought Cyclocity to Japan, beginning in Toyama in March with 150 bicycles. Thomas Guedron, president of MCDecaux, the local subsidiary of JCDecaux, says, “This is a great solution – we set it up and run it, so the city gets inexpensive public transport, and the bikes are eco-friendly, healthy and cheap to use.”
To access the bikes, which are available 24 hours a day, the user inserts a subscription card (¥500 a month) into the terminal to release a bike. After use, the bike can simply be returned to any of 15 docking stations in the city. The first 30 minutes is free; after that, the cost rises quickly – ¥200 for the second half hour, ¥500 for the third and subsequent half-hours.
This is to ensure the bikes remain a “proximity transport system”, available for short utility rides and the “last mile” of people’s commutes, says Guedron. As a result, the vast majority of “rentals” are well under 30 minutes as people use the bikes to get to where they’re going, rather than for sightseeing or just riding around. The bikes and stations are arranged in a 300-meter grid to encourage this type of usage.
The scheme is a winner for everyone. The city gets green cred and dozens of new jobs via an inexpensive and popular public transport system. Residents and visitors get convenient, cheap transportation, while local merchants benefit from greater access to their businesses. And JCDecaux, the world’s second-largest outdoor advertising firm, makes tidy amounts of money (it doesn’t reveal how much) selling ad space on panels near each docking station.
There have been a few problems, such as local merchants objecting to the ad panels in front of their stores. They tend to come onboard, however, after increased foot traffic boosts their sales. When the scheme began in France, there were problems with vandalism, theft and abandoned bicycles, but soon “people came to see the bikes as part of the community and those problems largely disappeared,” says Guedron.
He plans to eventually bring the scheme to Tokyo, though the challenges are daunting. “We believe both the concept and the business model could apply to Tokyo. The only issue [and this is true for many Japanese cities] is that, in order to cover the city centre with a 300-metre grid, the number of stations and bikes you would have to install is simply gigantic.”
Worldwide, Cyclocity is a phenomenon. Its 42,000 bicycles in 65 cities have been used over 120 million times since the scheme began. It has generated huge media coverage for JCDecaux, including enthusiastic celebrity endorsements. Though the Cyclocity business is still not a growth driver compared with the firm’s other businesses, “looking at the trend worldwide, this could change in the very near future,” says Guedron.
And in the meantime, each year Cyclocity reduces humanity’s carbon footprint by an estimated 23,000 metric tons of CO2.