The sociotechnical roots of smart mobility: Bike sharing since 1965

Introduction

Nowadays, to meet our sustainable mobility challenges, “smart mobility” promotes technology driven solutions like automated vehicles, peer-to-peer sharing applications, and the “internet of things” instead of embedding solutions in social practices. ¹ Significantly, the “smart mobility” discourse boosts these solutions are novel. They are not. Fifty years ago, activists, innovators, and policymakers were already seeking technically sophisticated urban mobility solutions based on people’s practices. These included ways to integrate public transit and cycling into a seamless experience, or changing car drivers’ behaviour through road pricing, more efficient use of roads, and restricting access in urban areas. ² Recognising that successful innovations always require the mutual shaping of technological and social change is a key insight in Science and Technology Studies (STS), or to cite Wiebe Bijker’s classic formulation: “society is not determined by technology, nor is technology determined by society. Both emerge as two sides of the sociotechnical coin”. ³ Building on this theoretical insight, we present the roots of bicycle sharing since the 1960s to show how its success only came about through the mutual shaping of social and technical innovations after decades of experimentation.

We trace the sociotechnical roots of bicycle and car sharing to show that already in the 1960s, social movements were campaigning for sustainable urban mobility solutions to be part of public transit. Such innovations were far ahead of their time, socially embedded in the wider critique of western car-centric mobility and technically cutting-edge, yet attuned to people’s daily practices.

The idea of bicycle sharing began in Amsterdam with the anarchist movement Provo presenting its White Bike Plan in 1965, and with visionary innovator Luud Schimmelpennink. ⁴ Political scientist Maxime Huré has done pioneering work on how the anarchist idea of bicycle sharing circulated internationally, how it shaped experiments in La Rochelle (FR) and Copenhagen (DK), and how French multinational JCDecaux and its well-known Vélib Paris bike sharing programme came to appropriate it for a corporate business model. Our article builds on Huré’s important insights, particularly into the contested terrain between the public good and the market for developing bicycle sharing. ⁵ Based on extensive Dutch archival material, interviews, and unpublished policy papers, we chronicle the missing historical links between the 1960s Provo movement and the 1990s corporate bicycle programmes like Vélib, focusing on Luud Schimmelpennink’s continued innovative and international role over half a century.

We also reconstruct the history of Schimmelpennink’s other legacy: the successful but thus far overlooked version of the Dutch Public Transit Bike (OV-fiets). Its bicycle share developers were able to learn from Schimmelpennink’s numerous experiments and prototypes to develop the current OV-fiets sharing system, representing a robust alternative to its commercial rivals. The OV-fiets, adopted in the late 1990s by Dutch Railways (Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS)), is a well-established dock-based system, with five million rides a year and 20,500 bicycles at three hundred train stations. Amid the myriad bicycle share programmes overwhelming cities worldwide, the Dutch service keeps on expanding. ⁶ OV-fiets stands alone in maintaining mobility as a public good on such a grand scale. The service is also significant because by integrating people’s practices, the OV-fiets provides a crucial link in the mobility chain and comes close to the original Provo ideals.

We explore the bicycle sharing trajectories – one commercial, one public – through key players, Provos and Schimmelpennink. His first anarchist white bicycle sharing experiments are well documented. ⁷ His legacy and the later role of this bicycle’s initiators (right up to the current ICT-based systems) are not. Remarkably, that 1970’s innovative trajectory initially featured his electric car share experiments (“Witkar”). We demonstrate how Schimmelpennink’s electric car share experiments provided the essential building block for today’s bicycle docking stations, electronic payment cards, and other service aspects.

The second section reconstructs how Schimmelpennink’s experiments enabled commercial and public sector companies to enter the arena: outdoor advertising agencies and the railroad. These powerful players succeeded in upscaling the bicycle sharing systems, where earlier experiments stalled. We argue that the OV-fiets since 2003 has become the most successful, providing commuters with a seamless travel experience based on Schimmelpennink’s insights, the cyclists’ federation lobby, and government investments to transform into a dedicated sociotechnical system of mobility.

Social innovation: When smart mobility was for free, 1965–present

The bicycle emerged as a powerful symbol and practice in the 1960s thanks to local as well as global forces. The worldwide counter movement opposing modernist car-oriented planning was symbolised by the epic 1960s struggle between community activist Jane Jacobs and urban planner Robert Moses in New York, with followers elsewhere. Amsterdam residents were prompted to act when their historic city centre was inundated with cars which suburban commuters parked along the canals for free; they were joined by protesters from neighbourhoods scheduled for demolition. The car lobby’s grandiose visions of building urban highways right through the centre and the metro’s cut-and-cover constructions both meant tearing down entire neighbourhoods. ⁸ From Munich to Montreal, residents of older neighbourhoods rose up against planners scheduling the demolition of their neighbourhoods to make way for urban highways. Like in many European cities, moreover, the relationship between cyclists and motorists in Amsterdam had changed rapidly and radically. ⁹ The protests began when public transit hardly budged (from 14 to 15 per cent); when automobility (which arrived relatively late in Amsterdam before growing quickly from 23 to 50 per cent) glutted the centre; and when cyclists’ share of daily trips dropped from an impressively high 63 per cent in 1960, to a still considerable 35 per cent in 1973. ¹⁰ The sudden reversal caused an uproar among cyclists and pedestrians. They demanded their street space back – particularly when the number of fatal car accidents rose dramatically. ¹¹ In Amsterdam, the bicycle came to symbolise the resistance to the invasive mobility plans.

In 1965, midway through cycling’s steep decline and the opposition to demolition plans giving cars access to the city, Amsterdam’s Provo anarchists provocatively proclaimed: “The bicycle is something but almost nothing”. ¹² It was the bicycle’s minimalism (its near-zero carbon footprint in today’s terminology), as well as cyclists’ vulnerability that served the Provos in countering (car-governed) consumer society. Provos made bicycles countercultural and green. Significantly, and in true anarchist tradition, their bike share scheme was free. According to Schimmelpennink, “the car is asocial, [but] the bicycle makes downtown a playful centre”. ¹³ As activist and industrial designer, he translated the anarchist symbol into the most concrete of all Provo protests: the famous 1965 White Bike Plan. The plan was to make bicycles available for free, without a lock, as a collective possession. To distinguish them from regular bikes, they would be painted white. ¹⁴ Within a few years, the white bicycle became an international countercultural icon, especially after the widely circulated 1969 photograph of popstar John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s honeymoon in the Amsterdam Hilton, showcasing the Provo bicycle on their “peace” bed.

The anarchist movement protested against many issues, from authorities’ self-righteousness and bourgeois life-style, to the Vietnam War, pollution, traffic deaths, police brutality, and unwanted pregnancies. Schimmelpennink found the Provos’ criticism of modern traffic (fatal accidents, pollution, and destruction of neighbourhoods to make way for cars) most appealing. ¹⁵ With his middle-class background and paid job, he was hardly a typical member of the Provo movement – far more practical than his fellow anarchists. He transformed the bicycle’s vulnerability in view of the new violent machines (cars) entering the city, into the concrete application of a public bicycle share plan. There were two sources of inspiration for developing the white bicycle: one philosophical, the other practical. In launching the free and unlocked white bike, the Provos were breaking the Amsterdam Police’s rule. Routinely, the city confiscated unattended “orphaned” bicycles because the law said they had to be locked. Provo public bicycle share sought to subvert the rule: bicycles – and people – should be liberated and free. Leaving a bicycle unlocked was a provocation and a social intervention. Schimmelpennink translated the anarchist philosophy in practical terms. He had observed that the KNSM shipbuilding company provided employees with free red bikes to cross the sprawling industrial site. ¹⁶ Why not paint bicycles white, leave them unlocked to be used by anyone?

Two years later, Schimmelpennink’s activism found another political outlet in 1967 when he replaced Bernhard de Vries on Amsterdam’s city council as representative for the anarchist platform Provo. He introduced – and lost – a resolution for a bicycle project with three hundred free white bikes. After his conservative colleague had dismissed bicycles as hopelessly old fashioned, he decided to develop instead a compact urban electric car as sustainable alternative. ¹⁷ He envisioned his 1967 e-car (White-Car) as shareware and public transit system. Operational between 1976 and 1986, the sharing programme allowed Amsterdammers to pick up an electric two-seater car at five charging stations. Schimmelpennink’s public electric car share was decades ahead of its time. He showed an advanced understanding of the potential to integrate emerging technologies, system innovation, and urban liveability.

As we will show, though Amsterdam never adopted a free bike sharing system as the Provos envisioned – that honour went to the still functioning Dutch National Park bike sharing programme in 1974, followed two years later by La Rochelle in France (Figure 1) – Schimmelpennink’s e-car share system, together with his original White Bike Plan, paved the way for today’s bicycle share programmes. ¹⁸

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Bicycle Sharing in La Rochelle (1980) in a park-and-ride service, allowing motorists to reach downtown. Vélos municipaux. Ill. Source: Photo by Jan Ploeger.

Technical innovation: Electric car share as building block, 1967–86

According to Schimmelpennink, cars could only play a role in cities if they were shared (public) and sustainable (electric). He did not mince his words: “Leave your shitcar, take a Witkar” [translation: white car]. ¹⁹ This “White-Car” was Schimmelpennink’s social and technical translation of the original anarchist bicycle share plan (Figure 2). Fossil-fuelled cars driven and owned by individuals were “shitcars”. His electric car share, by contrast, represented an ecologically sustainable public transit alternative. His mobility innovations were visionary from multiple perspectives: political ideology, funding strategy, social practice, and technology. Politically, electric White-Car sharing was not a stand-alone solution. The innovation formed part of his overall vision of sustainable urban mobility as a public good, which he articulated between 1969 and 1978 as chair of Amsterdam’s downtown neighbourhood association Old City (d’Oude Stadt). The association developed many traffic solutions for Amsterdam’s historic centre: from resident-only parking and on-demand local bus services to small cargo vehicles, shopping deliveries, and bicycle rental for a mobility-as-a-service system. ²⁰ Both the association and the White-Car cooperative operated on the premise that private cars did not belong in Amsterdam’s city centre. ²¹

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Schimmelpennink’s first design electric urban car in 1967: “Witkar”, IISG Archive. Source: Permission courtesy Luud Schimmelpennink.

Schimmelpennink paired the political vision with an innovative funding strategy. In 1968, using his network and his local fame as anarchist and councillor, he formed a cooperative of 20 people from countercultural and well-established progressive circles to build the first model through a funding campaign (equivalent to 170,000 today’s US$), before establishing a Co-operative Association four years later. ²² Between 1975 and 1977, the cooperative raised additional funds (equivalent to 2.5 million today’s US$) through government subsidies, financial institutions (Delta Lloyd insurance and the City of Amsterdam Savings Bank), and the media (socialist newspaper Het Parool) to get the ambitious system off the ground. ²³

Technically speaking, Schimmelpennink’s public e-car was equally radical. Due to a lack of off-the-shelf parts, he had to design and build the electric car sharing prototype from scratch. ²⁴ As professional model builder, he designed the polyester vehicle with a deposit-coin system analogous to the supermarket shopping cart and, on 24 May 1968, drove his prototype in Amsterdam’s main square. ²⁵ Four years later, he demonstrated two prototypes with an electric loading rail and phone dial at the international traffic exhibition Intertraffic in Amsterdam. ²⁶ He also organised political and institutional support by having the Transport Minister test drive his prototype and by having the White-Car certified by the Netherlands Vehicle Authority (RDW). ²⁷

The White-Car’s rental operation was also technologically advanced. With the support of 2,500 members, the cooperative society opened three loading stations with city funding in 1974 and 1975. At first, participants could use the car by showing the operator their membership card. By the spring of 1976, the developers had automated the registration system. Like a shopping cart, the White-Car was initially activated with a coin. Soon the developers replaced the coins by designing an automated payment system; this was in collaboration with the pioneering local Girobank – an early adopter of computer-related punch-card technology that transferred trips directly via an analogue telephone line to the user’s account. ²⁸ Finally, the team designed a detection system for users to check whether a White-Car was available. Schimmelpennink’s White-Car integrated operation, payment, and tracking.

That technical integration turned out to be the crucial element for today’s bicycle sharing, particularly the noncash payment method that doubled as tracking system. A local instrument maker created an advanced reader for magnetic card information about the White-Car user, storing data like time and destination on a tape recorder. Each day, the Girobank read out the magnetic tape, linking payments to rides. Before driving, cooperative members dialled the two-digit code of the destination station to check if a free place was available at the other end of their ride. ²⁹ In a play on words referring to this revolutionary magnetic card, the White-Car cooperative’s newsletter was called Key Biter (Sleutelhapper). ³⁰ By integrating payment and the car’s ignition key into one product, Schimmelpennink had combined innovation with financial savvy and politically progressive ideas about public transit. The cooperative set-up and the city’s unwillingness to upscale the system, however, prevented the White-Car from progressing beyond the ten-year pilot stage in Amsterdam. ³¹

Remarkably, the electronics and ICT innovations developed for the White-Car found their way back to bicycle sharing. A first step in that process came in 1982, when the Dutch Cyclists’ federation succeeded in getting the city of Amsterdam and Dutch Railways (NS) to commission Schimmelpennink to integrate the bicycle in the mobility chain with the technologies developed for the White-Car. ³² The railroad company was interested because of the Transport Minister’s mandate to link cycling to public transit as a form of before-and-after transport. ³³ Schimmelpennink’s new bike sharing idea, the White Bike, let users rent a bicycle through a dedicated rack with a magnetic stripe card like the White-Car. ³⁴ For both technical (the magnetic key was unsuitable for bicycles) and political (the railways developers did not want to work with Schimmelpennink) reasons, he failed to deliver the system. As we will see in the next section, the insights gained from prototyping and piloting subsequent systems in the 1990s had far-reaching consequences for the future of bicycle sharing. Moreover, the technical developments always went hand in hand with the advocacy and vision for a sustainable urban mobility future as public transit option.

ICT-based bicycle share: Amsterdam and Copenhagen, 1990–2000

In the 1990s, many countries put the environment on the agenda in response to the 1987 UN commission report. ³⁵ Traditional cycling countries like Denmark and the Netherlands renewed their interest in cycle policies. In 1988, Copenhagen committed to cycling infrastructure to encourage alternatives for automobility and improve the city’s health and air quality, while five (medium sized) European cities – Nakskov (DK), Groningen (NL), Erlangen (D), Nottingham (GB), and Winterthur (CH) – formed a cycling policy coalition. ³⁶ In 1991, the Dutch government followed suit by integrating cycling policy in its National Traffic and Transport Plan (SVV-2) with a seven-year Bicycle Masterplan (Masterplan Fiets) to promote safe cycling and reduce automobility by 3.75 per cent. ³⁷

On the international stage, in Copenhagen, activists Ole Wessung and Morten Sadolin proposed a deposit bicycle share (Bycyklen) around 1990. Their business model, providing a free service based on advertising revenues, was innovative. ³⁸ Users unlocked the bike by inserting a 20 kroner coin as deposit – the same method as Schimmelpennink’s first car share version in 1968 and the public self-service bicycle share that La Rochelle had considered, but dropped, in 1976. ³⁹ Although Schimmelpennink liked Copenhagen’s idea of the coin, he felt it needed improvement to prevent the persistent problem of bike theft and so he secured funding from the Ministry, the city of Amsterdam and Dutch Railways for a solution. ⁴⁰ His DEPO bike (as a reference to DEPOSIT) projected 15 base stations with 150 bicycles that users could unlock with a 5-guilder coin as returnable deposit. If the bicycle was not brought back within 20 min, the system would immobilise it. ⁴¹

Over the years, the project leaders from City Bike Copenhagen (Søren B. Jensen and Britta Krogh-Lund) and DEPO bike Amsterdam (Joep Hueffener) shared their experiences. ⁴² The Copenhagen activists’ selection of a coin-based system with an ordinary bicycle equipped with a box alongside a parking rack was a deliberate choice. Jensen recalled that after a decade of design discussions with the Dutch, the Danish group decided against Amsterdam’s high-tech approach. ⁴³ In 1995, Sadolin had advised Schimmelpennink: “Don’t make it [DEPO bike] too complicated. You always will be beaten in the race against vandals”. ⁴⁴ In the short term, the Danes succeeded in completing their system earlier because they used simplified design with tested technologies, achieving one thousand free bicycles at 120 stations and ambitious plans for expansion to five thousand bicycles at dedicated bicycle storages – a service mostly used by tourists. ⁴⁵

Schimmelpennink’s electronics-based bicycle system, however, was ultimately successful. After a study visit to Copenhagen, the Dutch Ministry concluded that the Danes’ small deposit fee discouraged people from returning the bicycle in time – if at all. The system also prevented operators from carrying out efficient maintenance. In 1996, Schimmelpennink addressed these challenges in his second version, combining the earlier White-Car electronic payment innovation with the Danish coin-deposit system. ⁴⁶ The updated DEPO bike had electronic identification and locked automatically when not returned. ⁴⁷ Schimmelpennink had now revolutionised the technical system using digital chip card technology.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

Schimmelpennink’s daughter showing prototype DEPO bike. Source: Y-tech 1993. Permission courtesy Luud Schimmelpennink.

Schimmelpennink’s start-up company Ytech (launched in 1987) went a step further by digitising the payment process. Instead of coins, he developed a digital wallet: a chipcard for small payments via the Dutch Postbank (Chipper). This upgraded phonecard doubled as tracking device, recording the bicycle user’s name and address, thus innovatively eliminating the White-Car’s earlier complex sign-up procedure. His company designed the rack and built 250 DEPO cycles (Figure 3); the Amsterdam public transit company (GVB) would operate the system, and the Postbank, Dutch Telecom (KPN) and Chipper Netherlands provided co-financing. ⁴⁸ Based on a feasibility study (1993) and tests runs (1994), the government believed the DEPO bike had a future. They advised running a pilot – three depots in Amsterdam over 15 locations with 250 bicycles by early 1998. ⁴⁹

Schimmelpennink’s prototype and social vision of a sustainable urban mobility continued to attract worldwide attention, including the BBC television programme Tomorrow’s World. ⁵⁰ Between 1997 and 2000, activists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and journalists from capital cities all over the globe approached him to learn more about DEPO. ⁵¹ Schimmelpennink pitched his vision astutely, attracting free publicity and organising funding for his prototypes, tests, and pilot runs for his sustainable urban mobility vision. He was ahead of his time with innovations like the magnetic card, the electric car, and the contactless chip card, just like his insistence to consider his mobility sharing schemes as part of the public transit system. As a true activist, he continued to share his ideas freely interested more about in spreading the vision than in monetising his innovation.

The experiments in Amsterdam and Copenhagen faced two challenges: how to scale up the system beyond the pilot and embed bicycle sharing in the public transit system. ⁵² The pioneering DEPO project in Amsterdam was aborted. The Copenhagen City Bike, despite its success, led a marginal existence. Danish publicist Thomas Krag recalled in 2002 how the City Bike was “a positive publicity project but is primarily used by tourists and young men. The City Bike adds virtually nothing to the cycle traffic in Copenhagen”. ⁵³ In La Rochelle, the bike sharing also catered for tourists visiting the city rather than commuters. And Copenhageners, like Amsterdammers, already owned bicycles. So why share?

Over the next decade, powerful corporate interests and public authorities succeeded in upscaling the experiments. They did so by finding a niche for bicycle sharing based on vastly different business models and mobility needs. Schimmelpennink’s DEPO inspired two systems: first, the stand-alone corporate bicycle sharing like JCDecaux’s Vélo’v in Lyon (since 2005) and Vélib in Paris (since 2007); second, the Dutch mobility chain OV-fiets (since 2000). Billboard companies like JCDecaux were keen to get a foot in the door and land lucrative deals with city governments. They succeeded in upscaling bicycle share programmes benefitting tourists and single users. As Huré shows, by 1998, JCDecaux’s American rival in outdoor advertising Clear Channel had broken into the European market with a bicycle share programme in Rennes featuring a magnetic card, a specially designed bicycle and branding like Schimmelpennink’s second generation DEPO. ⁵⁴ We revisit Huré’s story by providing a missing link between Schimmelpennink and Decaux.

In early 1999, Schimmelpennink and JCDecaux began exploring a collaboration to roll out the DEPO system worldwide. ⁵⁵ On 25 January 1999, founder Jean-Claude Decaux began contract negotiations, offering to invest a 40 per cent share in DEPO and Decaux company’s 100 R&D personnel to boost Ytech’s work. ⁵⁶ A contract was drafted, negotiated, but not signed. ⁵⁷ Discussions continued and to step up their collaboration, Decaux’s daughter company Publex arranged a meeting between Jean-François Decaux and Schimmelpennink in Amsterdam on 17 February 2000. ⁵⁸ A year later, in March 2001, the collaboration ended, after the Postbank discontinued its digital card (chipper) development that Schimmelpennink had selected as the standard. ⁵⁹ Moreover, the Dutch innovator held a patent for the Netherlands, but not for Europe, leaving him no negotiating power with the French multinational. ⁶⁰ Within four years, the JCDecaux Corporation introduced its first bicycle share in Lyon in 2005, with most of Schimmelpennink’s characteristic third generation DEPO features: a digital card, docking stations, and bankcard for occasional users. JCDecaux’s bicycle sharing programmes – and others like them – were less about offering mobility solutions for local needs, than serving corporate strategies to land sweet deals with local governments.

Schimmelpennink’s digital DEPO bike also inspired the public version aimed at solving a mobility challenge. Publicly owned Dutch Railways not only solved the scale-up issue like Decaux did. But the train company solved also the puzzle of how to integrate bicycle share into a public transit service, which had been a crucial factor in the original Provo idea. The railways proved essential in developing and upscaling the system in an effort to create public transit bicycle sharing that would get customers to and from stations. Finding a niche in a country where most people own a bicycle, the programme served commuters rather than tourists. It became one of the most successful publicly owned bicycle sharing programmes in the world. As we discuss in the next section, technically, the OV-fiets resembled Decaux’s corporate system, but was otherwise radically different. This OV-fiets provided commuters with a before-and-after service in the mobility chain, transforming their journey into a seamless experience. The service also built on the Dutch Cyclists’ Federation’s user-based expertise and the government policy shift to chain mobility. Finally, despite a fierce political struggle, the system maintained its public character. Developers utilised many of Schimmelpennink’s experiments and insights but incorporated the bicycle sharing programme in the mobility chain. A shift in national priorities helped to create a niche.

Mobility chain: Solving rail commuters’ last mile, 1982–present

As we have seen, by the 1990s the Dutch government developed ideas about the mobility chain and began to support bicycle sharing. Their interest was not entirely new. To counteract the negative impacts of automobility, policymakers in the mid-1970s had abandoned the exclusive focus on building highways in response to predictions of ever-growing car traffic and congestion if nothing was done. ⁶¹ The 1975 Long-term Plan for Passenger Transport gave cycling – for the first time – a prominent role as both feeder system and egress mode for rail commuters. ⁶² By the 1990s, the new centre-left government put the bicycle back on the national agenda by providing substantial funding through Masterplan Fiets. Car commuters driving less than 5 km were to get on bicycles. For longer commutes, the policy encouraged bicycle parking facilities at train stations. For this reason, the government was also interested in improving the bike–train combination. ⁶³ In 1988, Dutch Railways had devised strategies to compete with automobility and double the number of train passengers (Rail 21). It identified one persistent bottleneck: potential passengers had to get to the station, somehow. One solution was the bicycle parking plan (Stalling 21); the other was the door-to-door strategy in 1992 focusing on people’s experience of how best to travel from A to B. ⁶⁴

The Transport Ministry presented chain mobility as its solution for the contradiction between fossil fuel-based economic growth and reducing environmental pressures in response to the Brundtland Report. ⁶⁵ True to the neo-liberal winds of the 1990s, the market had to realise door-to-door convenience through pricing policies and driving. Interest in the mobility chain provided the policy framework for public transit bike sharing. ⁶⁶

In 1999, the labour party’s Transport Minister subsidised start-ups in mobility services to develop alternatives for automobility. ⁶⁷ The government agency MOVE awarded 24 projects in five areas: car sharing, van pooling, information and transaction services, new mobility services, and bicycle service innovations. MOVE believed the DEPO system had great potential for integrating cycling with public transit. ⁶⁸ Although the project no longer received funding, new initiatives emerged from its legacy. Schimmelpennink, by rejecting coins, had already taken the revolutionary innovative step of integrating electronic identification and digital technology, which proved essential to further develop the systems. Government funding for several bicycle-related pilots turned into lasting and established systems like the OV-fiets, the electric two-wheeler e-bike with pedal support, and Lo-Minck’s automated bicycle parking systems. ⁶⁹

Dutch Railways provided the key institutional niche that enabled the system’s upscaling beyond the pilot. Its infrastructure management company (Railinfrabeheer or ProRail since 2003) launched a think-tank to strengthen the train-bicycle as door-to-door service in 1998 with the slogan “At each station a bike and a car is ready for you”. This laid the basis for the OV-fiets. After the Board of Directors (infrastructure) endorsed further development and its innovation manager, Ronald Haverman, was asked to launch a R&D project in early 2000, ProRail’s innovation team consulted cycling experts. They learned from the Cyclists’ Federation about user needs and harvested Schimmelpennink’s legacy – in particular his DEPO bicycle idea as bike-train service. ⁷⁰ The government MOVE programme funded the first crucial phase in 2000. ⁷¹

ProRail innovation team’s elaborate consultation process produced key design elements that made the OV-fiets system so successful. First, the idea relied on a sturdy, fool-proof, and easy-to-use bicycle based on an existing model. This made the system cheap. Second, the payment involved a contactless smart card using radio frequency identification. The third element was quite new: easy-to-use Internet-based communication. Thus, the bike’s success relied on integrating a payment system and web platform into one transaction through a single card swipe. ⁷² Moreover, the Netherlands’ existing train station infrastructure for guarded bicycle parking provided on-the-spot-monitoring, service, and repair with no additional investments, avoiding the distribution challenges that hampered other systems. Finally, the brand name OV-fiets conveyed its basic innovative role in the mobility chain. In short, the OV-fiets differs from most bike sharing systems in crucial ways. At a rate of 3.85 euros (4.25 dollars) per 24 h, the service is fairly cheap. Unlike most other city bike programmes, neither tourists nor one-timers can access the OV-fiets system. The free online subscription links the user’s personal public transit chip card, while the requirement to return the bicycle to the train station where it was issued links the system to the railroad infrastructure. ⁷³

Initially, the OV-fiets success formula faced stiff internal resistance because it competed with the railways’ existing bicycle rental services, operated by small independent entrepreneurs, whose business model was to rent relatively few bicycles with large profit margins and whose customers were day-trippers, not commuters. For train passengers in a hurry, the rental process was cumbersome. ⁷⁴ The OV-fiets business model, in contrast, rented as many bikes as possible with small profit margins and at minimum transaction costs for customers. ⁷⁵ The system’s success was built on reducing commuters’ transaction time to 3 s. ⁷⁶

Haverman’s design team, like Schimmelpennink, understood that technology alone was not enough for its innovation to succeed. They lobbied Parliament for support. On the recommendation of Green Left MP Hugo van der Steenhoven and Cyclists’ Federation staff member Miriam van Bree, the developers invited the mobility specialists in all the political parties to test the OV-fiets. ⁷⁷ In 2000, Parliament overwhelmingly voted for Van der Steenhoven’s funding amendment (EUR 2.28 million, equivalent to 3.75 million today’s US$). ⁷⁸ By 2003, there were 21 bicycle parking places in the pilot. ⁷⁹ In 2004, when government funds failed to cover all the costs, socialist MP Arda Gerkens moved an amendment through Parliament compelling the Minister to provide additional funding (EUR 500,000). Developers also involved key players to attract public support through the project’s ambassadors.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 4.

Policymakers opening parking facility at the fast Ferry Velsen-Amsterdam, 2006. Wubbo Ockels, first Dutch astronaut second from left. Source: Calendar 2007 OV-fiets. Free of rights (confirmed by Ronald Haverman).

In the heyday of deregulation, however, state funding for the OV-fiets was heavily contested. Was the OV-fiets a public service in the public transit mobility chain or should its further development be left to the market? In 2004, the Christian-democrat Minister discontinued funding and suggested a commercial alternative: an automated Bike Dispenser that could turn a profit at 50 rentals a day. She did not consider the OV-fiets a service, but a commercial activity. She argued that the government already funded bicycle rental start-ups and foreign corporations like JCDecaux were interested. Moreover, European regulations discouraged national state aid. ⁸⁰

The Minister’s disinterest combined with the enormous success of the OV-fiets posed a serious dilemma for state-funded ProRail. To divest, the company first outsourced payment processing. When that failed, it delegated the OV-fiets leasing operation to a newly established administrative entity on 1 January 2005: the OV-fiets Foundation. ⁸¹ Under the two-year agreement, ProRail owned the formula and logo; the Foundation’s mandate was to develop a cost-effective business model that would prepare the public product for market by the end of 2006 (Figure 4). External consultants estimated that the operation, with six hundred thousand rentals annually at 2.75 Euro (equivalent to 3.05 today's US$) per ride, would reach a break-even point for commercial exploitation. The national rental system’s market share could potentially grow to three million rentals annually or 1 per cent of the total number of train trips in the Netherlands. ⁸² By early 2006, ProRail announced it was terminating its funding and transferring the formula to the railways. ⁸³ The OV-fiets Board was wary of the railways’ monopolistic tendencies and questioned its commitment to keeping the rental price low for public transit travellers. ⁸⁴ ProRail argued that the Foundation had failed to create a cost-effective operation. Only Dutch Railways would be up to the task. ⁸⁵ The Foundation’s concerns were legitimate. Dutch Railways suffered turbulent and cost-cutting times and faced workers’ strikes.

What saved the project was the 2001 appointment of commercial director Bert Meerstadt, placing an advocate for the door-to-door service strategy within the organisation. ⁸⁶ Between 2003 and 2005, the railways invested in Park-and-Ride facilities to attract more passengers after consultants concluded that bicycle parking services could be profitable in the long run. ⁸⁷ When no commercial parties expressed interest in the OV-fiets formula, in 2006 Meerstadt’s team agreed that the railway company NS Passengers would take over the OV-fiets and invest EUR 7 million (c. equivalent to 11 million today’s US$). ⁸⁸ The business model relied on low operating costs – simple, cheap but reliable bicycles and an ordinary mechanical key tagged with a bar-code which an operator scanned using a hand-held device – and on the many users, whose relatively expensive long-distance tickets could compensate for the bicycle’s operating losses. Nevertheless, the precise business model and significance of the service were still bones of contention.

The tension between the Foundation and ProRail about the future of the OV-fiets reached boiling point by late November 2006, when the negotiations between OV-fiets and NS Passengers broke down. ⁸⁹ The well-respected labour politician Jeltje van Nieuwenhoven was asked to mediate. ⁹⁰ She concluded the bicycle programme was a valuable asset in encouraging public transit that could not scale up without funding for more station-based parking facilities. More fundamentally, state subsidised ProRail’s mandate prohibited them from running a bicycle rental service. Van Nieuwenhoven advised the Minister that the railway company should operate the OV-fiets through a separate company for a three-year period and the Foundation be given the mandate to monitor public interest. If the passenger company carried out its task well and managed to break even, the agreement could be made permanent; if not, a market party would step in. Van Nieuwenhoven negotiated with the railways to invest EUR 10 million and to collaborate with regional authorities and other public transit carriers. By October 2007, the parties signed an agreement with the government and established a foundation to guard the principle of bicycle sharing as a national public transit system asset. 92

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 5.

Rental bikes NS (1975–2000); Bike Share OV-fiets (2002–18). Data from Haverman 2006, 11; IFOV 1985, 16; Kroon 1981, 940; Annual Report NS 2017 and press release NS 18 December 2019.⁹¹

The Foundation won on most points – especially by insisting that OV-fiets was a public good. By 2008, OV-fiets had been rescued as a public transit service, at least for the next decade. Crucially, Haverman and his team succeeded in designing the public-bike share programme by finding a specific niche that ensured seamless travel for train commuters. It was an homage to Schimmelpennink and the original Provo idea of mobility shareware being not only accessible-to-all, but a public transit service (Figure 5).

Conclusion

STS scholarship shows how successful innovations involve the mutual shaping of social and technical processes. Our story emphasises the tenacity of social activist and mechanical engineer Luud Schimmelpennink, creator of the world’s first bike share programme (White Bike Plan 1965) over half a century. With a keen eye for technological innovations, he applied them to the anarchist bicycle sharing systems early on, introducing a coin-based docking system (later magnetic card) for his electric car sharing scheme (White-Car 1967–86) and using smart-card technology for his DEPO bike design (1991–96). In developing prototypes, test runs, and pilots, the activist-inventor was ahead of his time, not only for his technical innovations but also for its embedding in society. He insisted that his bike and car share innovations should be part of the public transit system. He also continued to be committed to the collectivist ideals of sharing his innovations and was less interested in monetising them. Yet, he did not manage to upscale the innovations into mature, broadly applied systems. The matter of how to socially embed his innovations in the right governance and business model was left to more powerful and institutionally well-positioned players: multinational billboard advertising companies and a national railroad.

French outdoor advertising multinational JCDecaux and many of imitators since – ranging from Danish Donkey Republic systems to Chinese start-up companies Ofo, O-bike, and Mobike in cities like Adelaide, London, Singapore, and Seattle – were interested in lucrative free-advertising deals with cities and data gathering operations with customers rather than offering mobility solutions. ⁹³ Despite their successful business models, these companies faced complex docking stations, maintenance, and communication. For one, their business models were not based on providing mobility solutions. ⁹⁴

The major challenge of the Provo legacy that had eluded Schimmelpennink – all experiments worldwide for that matter – was the idea that bicycle sharing was part of the public transit system. The powerful Dutch Railways, however, succeeded in upscaling the OV-fiets. This solved many of the issues that bedevilled other systems. The programme fulfilled an urgent mobility need for commuters: how to get to and from the station. Within the context of a government institution and in the capable hands of its developer Ronald Haverman, the public system incorporated (chip-card technology) and updated (web-based rental system) Schimmelpennink’s innovations combined with plain, affordable, and sturdy bicycles. Integrated in the existing train station infrastructure, moreover, the OV-fiets model needed no major investment in docking stations. For train passengers, OV-fiets incorporated cycling as the missing link in their journey (mobility chain). Having won the political contest, the programme successfully maintained the service as a public good instead of a commercial activity. The OV-fiets came closest to the activist-inventor’s original social ideals. Since 2003, the Dutch OV-fiets has grown spectacularly, achieving five million rentals annually in 2019.

Expanding its success, Dutch Railways has found a sustainable business model for attracting new passengers and combining technical sophistication with simplified design. ⁹⁵ Admiring that accomplishment, Danish bicycle consultant Mikael Colville-Andersen wondered why Danish Railways did not adopt its Dutch counterpart’s system and why Copenhagen had succumbed to replacing its 17-year-old City Bike with a new cycle route featuring “useless, overcomplicated technology” – ignoring Morten Sadolin’s warning in 1995 to keep the design simple. ⁹⁶

Simplified design was only one piece of the puzzle. OV-fiets found a niche in meeting a mobility need. Successful innovation, as scholars insist, involves a socio-technical process requiring all factors to fall into place. In the case of Copenhagen’s City Bike, a business economist in innovation points out that the decisions involve governance (is it a public or private service), product (is maintenance included), use (ownership, renting, or leasing), and service (does it provide the last mile of your journey). ⁹⁷ Our study shows that the complex trajectory of integrating technical innovations, governance, business models, and people’s mobility practices into a sustainable mobility system involved tenacious individuals, social organisations, and powerful institutions over more than half a century.

The OV-fiets story invites a discussion on whether bike sharing, in order to succeed, should be designed as a standalone or as an essential link in the mobility chain. More broadly, the case also highlights the issue of whether bicycle sharing programmes should be considered a public service or commercial opportunity. These questions are as relevant today as over the past half century. Ultimately, our history of bicycle sharing also serves as counter narrative to an exclusive focus on high-tech solutions – one that now defines “smart” as a technology driven by mobility needs.