Sallie Alcorn said she can recall a sense of excitement at City Hall in 2012 when Houston’s leaders launched a bike-sharing network to serve the downtown area.
Now in her second term as an at-large city council member, Alcorn was a city staffer at the time and was quick to take advantage of a transportation option that was both new and promising for a historically car-centric city where traffic jams and parking lots could be considered part of the culture.
“I remember my first trip. I had to take something over to the federal building,” Alcorn said Monday. “I just remember thinking how cool it was that I was riding a bike downtown and it was so easy to do.”
Alcorn said it’s now “really sad” that she and other Houstonians no longer have that option. Houston BCycle, the nonprofit that was stood up by the city and grew beyond downtown to operate as many as 175 stations at one point, shuttered Sunday amidst ongoing financial struggles.
That leaves Houston as the largest city in the United States without a bike-sharing system, and it is unclear when – or if – the city will get another one. Board members for the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (METRO), the region’s public transit provider, voted last fall to launch a bike share network of their own, but an agency spokesperson said Monday the plan is under review by a largely new leadership group.
James Llamas, the vice chair of Houston BCycle’s board of directors, said public funding through METRO or another local governmental entity would be the most feasible way to support another bike share network. He said BCycle’s business model of using both user and sponsorship revenue to cover operational costs became unsustainable once Houston’s network attempted to grow from a mostly recreational service to one that could provide an alternative, equitable mode of transportation, adding that sponsorship revenue largely dried up after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic though ridership initially increased.
BCycle’s leadership tried to partner with METRO and at times got financial support from Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis as well as the city, which last fall gave BCycle $500,000 to extend its operational runway until this summer, but could not secure the type of sustaining public subsidy it sought.
Llamas said $1 million annually could have supported a 175-station network at a cost of about $3 per bike ride, whereas METRO bus trips cost about $10 per ride in taxpayer funds, he said. The bike share networks in cities such as Austin, Fort Worth and Los Angeles are supported by local public transit agencies, Llamas noted, and public subsidies have long paid for the roads and highways that serve drivers of cars and trucks.
“This is an essential transportation service,” said Peter Eccles, the director of policy and planning for LINK Houston, a nonprofit that advocates for an equitable and multi-faceted transportation network. “Like other essential transportation services, there should be a public backstop for keeping them operational.”
But there does not seem to be enough political will for such an arrangement in Houston, and perhaps not even as much as there was 12 years ago. Houston’s bike share network was created during the administration of Mayor Annise Parker, and the city’s network of bike lanes and trails expanded under her successor Sylvester Turner, but new Mayor John Whitmire has been critical of infrastructure initiatives that broaden space for cyclists while reducing the number of vehicle lanes.
Alcorn, who chairs the Houston-Galveston Area Council board and serves on its Transportation Policy Council, has been a cycling advocate and often gets around without the use of an automobile on Fridays. She said she’s hopeful that another bike-share system will materialize, but also said she cannot envision municipal leaders committing any more money to one at a time when the city is in a financial crunch.
In terms of community interest in a bike share network, Alcorn called it a “mixed bag.”
“There’s no denying we are a very car-centric city, that the bulk of people drive to where they’re going,” she said. “Bikes are a tougher sell, because it’s a smaller group of people. But it’s people that still count, people that rely on safe bicycle infrastructure to get around. You would increase the number of bike riders in this city if you had more safe options.”
Alcorn has used bike share systems in cities such as New York, San Francisco and Paris and said they seem to be more successful when a title sponsor is in place to fund the network, such as New York’s Citi Bike. That could be Houston’s best bet moving forward, she said.
But Llamas said Houston BCycle went down that road, enlisting a national marketing firm to help secure a title sponsor, and was unsuccessful. Board members were told that Houston’s network did not offer enough value to a potential sponsor, he said, because the city’s lack of population density and rules restricting billboards would not provide adequate advertising opportunities.
Ultimately, Llamas said, “It’s absolutely going to take leadership from some elected or appointed officials to say that this is an initiative that we’re going to take on.” That notion also is becoming clear in other U.S. cities where nonprofit bike share networks like Houston’s are fizzling out, he said, adding those markets are grappling with the idea of paying for something that previously was self-sustaining.
Ellis, the Harris County commissioner for Precinct 1, said he agreed that bike share networks should get public funding and also that “it all comes down to political will.” He said his office would be willing to subsidize a system but not by itself, saying he would want the city and perhaps other local entities to also be involved.
Ellis also encouraged cycling enthusiasts like himself to speak up.
“We’re at a juncture where it’s imperative for Houstonians looking for a walkable, bikeable, transit-friendly future, to let their decision makers know that,” said Robin Holzer, the deputy director for local nonprofit BikeHouston.
In the meantime, Houston is without bike share for the first time in more than a decade after at one point generating more than 300,000 rides in a year on the network. Llamas called that an “unfortunate” reality that he hopes will be short-lived.
“First, Houston will be without bike share for a period of time, so the momentum we’ve created, the habits people have built, the integration of this mode into their everyday life, is going to be disrupted,” he said. “Second, we’re going to lose the bike share talent and passion and knowledge that we’ve developed over the last 12 years. We’re going to do our best to document and preserve the knowledge that’s been created, so that when Houston comes back to bike share – which it’s hard to envision that not happening, given how integral bike share is in cities around the world – hopefully we won’t be starting from square one.”
