Community Corner

DecoBike's Return to Long Beach Unlikely in 2013

Bike-sharing company says lack of a full boardwalk means they'll need to take a year hiatus.


As New York City prepares to roll out the start of a 600 station bike-share program next month, the City of Long Beach may see the program it hosted for the first time last summer take a hiatus as the boardwalk is rebuilt.  

A DeckoBike official told Patch Wednesday that the bike share-rental company may not return to the Long Island beach town that continues to rebuild after it was slammed hard during Hurricane Sandy.

“We’re not going to have a presence this summer because we really need the boardwalk,” said Bonifacio Diaz, co-owner and chief operating officer of the Miami-based DecoBike.

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During its first season in Long Beach, the company installed some 400 bikes at more than 20 kiosk stations around the city, including West Beech Street, Edwards Boulevard, Shore Road and the boardwalk. Diaz said that riders used the stations on the boardwalk most. “The main attraction of Long Beach is people going to the beach and the boardwalk,” he said. 

DecoBike cleared their bikes from the city before Sandy even appeared on the map, storing them away for fall and winter. But the kiosk stations, which consist of rails with locks and meters, were left standing and Sandy wrought mechanical damage on them. “We went back and re-assessed the damage and realized salt water went through the kiosks and damaged all the locks,” Diaz said.

DeckoBike has had talks with city officials about the coming summer, Diaz said, as the company waits for boardwalk construction to begin. According to the engineer overseeing the project, the first phase of building will begin at the center of town, roughly between National and Long Beach boulevards, but a completed structure is not expected until fall or later. Diaz doesn’t believe the boardwalk will return in time for the company to consider returning this year. 

“We want to see if they can create a special space for each kiosk on the boardwalk, like a bump-out or something, which we originally spoke about,” said Diaz, who noted that he is waiting for a response from the city.

But city attorney Corey Klein said he and city officials aren’t clear about the company’s position about this summer and are waiting to hear their plan of action.

“We’re meeting with them and still in the midst of discussions with them as to exactly what’s going to happen for the summer,” Klein said. “As far as firm positions that anyone is taking with regard to any of these things, nobody is 100 percent certain as of yet.”  

In 2011, DecoBike and the city agreed on a contract that includes corporate sponsorship and advertising in which the city would receive 10 percent of the company’s gross revenue and advertising incomes. While the contract calls for five consecutive years of service, Diaz said the company would talk to the city about taking a year off due to the storm-damaged city’s circumstances.

“This is an unfortunate situation, it was a storm,” he said. “It was out of our control. So we’re hoping the city is willing to help out. There’s hundreds of thousands of dollars lost here. So it’s something we both have to agree to go forward with. But definitely we want to be back in 2014 with a full system going.”

Klein said DecoBike is one of many people impacted by the hurricane that the city is talking with to come up with solutions. Last April, the city and DecoBike agreed to amend the contract to reduce the number of kiosk stations in certain residential areas, following a slew of complaints from residents as the company started to install the stations around town. DecoBike agreed to relocate some of the stations.

The program kicked off just before Independence Day last year, several weeks after their original target of Memorial Day weekend, which set the company back, Diaz said.

Through a credit-card-only meter system, renters paid rates that ranged from $4 for 30 minutes to $24 for eight hours, and Long Beach residents were able to purchase a $20 monthly bike pass for unlimited 30-minute rides, among other pricing plans. Diaz declined to provide a dollar figure on the revenue the company generated in Long Beach last year, because he felt it wouldn’t accurately reflect what the program could generate during a full season of operation.

“Overall, we were getting the rides and we saw every month it was increasing and people were getting to know the system,” he said, adding that taking part in a bike-share program is an educational process. “It was going pretty good during the summer.”

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