Thus it is with Mi Bici. Since it got rolling December 1, 2014, I have seen growing numbers of users casually pedalling hither and yon in the eight-square-kilometer area that is the first to have Mi Bici and in which I am lucky enough to reside. These intrepid users follow the bold arrows and white and green stripes newly painted on the pavement, exult in their bikes’ flashing solar-powered safety lights and make merry over the scads of street signs informing any recalcitrant autos, taxis and even the much-feared buses that bicycles have “Prioridad.” All this makes Mi Bici look so do-able.
I’ve always ascribed to the tongue-in-cheek motto that “Everything is easy once you know how,” a truism that nicely sidesteps the fact that some tasks have much shorter learning curves than others. Yet it is still accurate that once you understand crucial, basic information, almost no task remains difficult.
So okay. After perusing signs on the kiosks at the Mi Bici stations near my apartment — here, the stations with their racks holding 10 to 15 bikes are as frequent as one per block — and giving some cursory reads to mibici.net, there are still some things I can’t get my head around. Nevertheless, I am pretty sure, or maybe just hopeful, that if I sign up, no disaster is going to befall me or my credit card. And I do know some essential facts such as that the first 30 minutes of each trip are “free,” or included in your economical annual fee of 365 pesos a year (which of course works out to a mere one peso a day). I also know that if your bike gets stolen or damaged, you simply call the Mi Bici number and all will be well. I think.
So, during the Christmas holidays, I try to sign up on mibici.net. It doesn’t work.
Luckily, a chance conversation with longtime Guadalajara resident, bicycle enthusiast and Macintosh owner Michael Shapiro reveals that the Web page has a glitch preventing Mac users from registering. And I have a Mac.
“I had to go into the office and use one of their computers to sign up,” Shapiro informs me. So I set my sights on the Mi Bici office on Federalismo near La Paz.
Then, my next door neighbor, Omar Magaña, tells me another glitch. Seems that the narrow, white-hatched lanes that have recently been painted on some streets, which I assumed were for bike riders, are actually zones that bikers should avoid.
“They’re for parked cars to open their doors, so they don’t hit the bicyclists. But everybody thinks they’re for bicycles,” Magaña laments. A friend of Magaña’s is one of three, local, thirtyish Mi Bici founders, so that’s why he’s in the know.
Yes, everything is easy once you know how. But I’m finding that to get crucial details about Mi Bici, it helps to have friends.
However, spurring me along the path to happy pedaling are the upbeat Mi Bici ads showing young professionals like me cycling contentedly and helmet-free on their sturdy red steeds. (Truth be told, I’m an old professional, but like the models I don’t put stock in helmets either.)
Similarly, Mi Bici represents my hope, and the hopes of many others, that something can turn around the only really horrible thing in Guadalajara — the traffic. The word is that Mi Bici aims to make it easy to use a bike for the little trips for which you might normally use your car, and even to help you combine car and bike trips in a park-and-ride scheme. It’s not designed to be a recreational system, although it can, with some planning, be used recreationally.
I don’t own a car, so obviously I’m not the targeted Mi Bici user. Neither, apparently, is the graphic designer and owner of a cool cafe around the corner from me. This hip guy informs me that his staff uses Mi Bici for making food deliveries, and says it is just perfect for these multiple, short trips, all of which are “free.”
Oops. There is a clause in the Mi Bici contract stipulating that bikes should not be used in “forma lucrativa,” so these deliveries (just like another temptation, lending your key) may not be kosher.
But the cafe owner has at least clarified one gray area for me: you can use the bikes as many times a day as you want, all for “free.” (But you do have to wait five minutes between uses, I later find.) You just make sure to return the bike to any station before a half hour is up, or else you turn into a pumpkin —your credit card automatically gets charged a small fee, for example, 20 pesos for the second half hour.
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n fact, theoretically, if you wanted to take a long trip within the Mi Bici area, which would be hard considering its currently small size, you could do so in short legs, returning the bike to one of the area’s 86 stations and then checking out another bike after five minutes of toe tapping. Everything is easy once you know how.
My neighbor Magaña also clears up another question that didn’t get answered on the web site. He says that when you sign up online, within a few days staff deliver your very own very physical key to your home. (This key turns out to be a small plastic gizmo with a bar code on it, which looks more like a key holder.) I had wondered how, after mere computer registration, you could possibly wind up with a key in hand. Now I have my answer.
When I finally make it to the Mi Bici office at Federalismo and La Paz, like most people, I still have questions. Although I forget to bring my passport and have to go back home for it, in the end all goes smoothly. A young, friendly staff member with good English shepherds me through the process in about a half hour. I deftly sign the small-print, 21-clause, Spanish contract. And I put two questions to the staffer: What happens if the bike gets stolen? What happens if I damage the bike?
“You’re not responsible if the bike is stolen,” she says. If I damage the bike, I have to “activate the insurance policy.” This is reassuring, so, hard hitting reporter that I am, I drop it.
Later, however, after looking at some of the fine print and talking to seasoned Mi Bici users, the picture isn’t as rosy as the friendly staffer indicated. In fact, within the contract and web page lurks a plethora of alarming references to parting with more moola, bread, wampum or legal tender. An asterisked sentence even declares that the annual subscription involves 5,000 pesos — much higher than the 365 pesos I actually paid (and which, due to the favorable current exchange rate, showed up on my statement as a mere $25US).
Similarly, the contract declares that the arrendataria (me) signs a “voucher abierto” (open voucher) equivalent to 10 percent of the total value of the heavy, sturdy bike and thus guarantees faithful and punctual compliance with all obligations.
Avid cyclist and Mi Bici user Rob Sorensen confirms and clarifies this: “The bikes are Canadian and very good quality. They say they’re worth 1,200 Canadian dollars. You’d have to pay 120 dollars if there’s a problem.”
Also, the web page says that bike robberies, loss or accidents generate extra charges and that in such cases, you must call or e-mail Mi Bici and a staffer comes out to assist you, determine responsibility and/or assess the monetary amount of damages. In addition, you may be responsible for bringing charges against a criminal. Nothing fun about that.
Burdened by all this dross, I call the Mi Bici hotline (3002-2424) and once again a cheerful young staffer melts my carefully cultivated American-consumer, table-pounding ire. In English. (My Spanish is good but she persists with English and, indeed, English speaking staff at Mi Bici materialize at every turn.)
The “voucher abierto,” she says patiently, is what you do in a hotel, but it’s only used if you keep the bike more than 30 minutes. The “garantia” payment of 10 percent of the bike’s value is not invoked unless you have problems such as a robbery or damage. She says the most you would have to pay is 1,500 pesos.
The staffer and I never get to the bottom of the 5,000-peso figure I saw on the web page. “Maybe the bike is worth more than 15,000 pesos,” she ventures, but insists that the highest possible amount you owe would be 1,500 pesos. Once again, I figuratively throw up my hands and invoke my faith that all will be well. After all, how often has any bike of mine been stolen (especially while I am using it) or even damaged? Never.
Sorensen, who is equally positive about the system and uses it to come and go to work six days a week, launches into explaining other quandaries, such as technical snafus at some stations.
“Once on my way to work, with 20 minutes to spare, my key wouldn’t liberate any bicycles. I got the red light. A señor standing nearby told me the system was down in my area only and to go to a nearby station. I did and got to work with one minute to spare.”
“One of the principal problems I know of,” agrees the cheerful staffer, “is due to weather. The stations run by solar power, so if it’s rainy, sometimes you can’t get or return a bike and you have to go to another station.” (And when you’re worried about time in such emergencies, she adds, put your key in the kiosk at the first station and use the touch-screen to ask for ten minutes of “Tiempo Extra.”)
Almost everyone involved in Mi Bici mentions the problematic “bike culture” in Guadalajara, a city with a car culture said to be about the worst in Mexico. And so city’s bike culture, inextricably tied to car culture, boils down to cyclists’ skills, how politely car drivers treat cyclists and vice versa. It gets varying reviews.
“Drivers have gotten a LOT better over the last ten years in terms of respecting cyclists,” reports seasoned biker Shapiro. “When I first started riding here, there was absolutely no respect at all for cyclists … But with the rise of the Via Recreativa [Sunday street bike rides] and bike culture, the awareness grew exponentially.”
“Bus drivers especially will run you off the road,” said another Mi Bici user. “In some streets, there’s no room for cyclists when buses are going by, and there are 5,000 of them in Guadalajara, so be ready to jump up on the sidewalk.” (Two years before Mi Bici, a bus pushed this cyclist into a tree, dislocating his hip.)
“Avenida Washington has 14-inch barriers, but cars and buses and taxis run right over them,” he went on. “I’ve seen taxis pass on the right through nice bike lanes like the one on La Paz. I’d recommend big stone barriers like they have in Ajijic.
“And on the bike, it tells you ‘Don’t ride on the sidewalk’ but sometimes you absolutely have to. That’s another problem — the sidewalks. Buildings are designed with insufficient parking so people park all over sidewalks.
“Another problem is at the downtown stations where I live. Troublemakers have put tape over the pistons that go into the triangle to lock the bike. So you might not realize your bike is unlocked. If it doesn’t lock and someone steals it, you’re liable. Watch for the green light.”
“We lack a good transport culture here,” agrees Mi Bici user Angélica Camarena. “Cars don’t honk at me, but sometimes I feel the pressure. I ride on the side but often there’s not enough space. Plus the streets may have dangerous holes and storm drains.”
Still, despite all their cautions and complaints, Mi Bici users are consistently enthusiastic about the system and want it to work.
“Mi Bici was very useful to me when I was doing errands at an interior design office I worked for,” says Camarena. “I used it four or five times a day,” indicating that the goal of reducing car traffic is being met.
“I use it to go to Walmart for groceries,” Sorensen says. “The bikes have a strong bungee on the front that you can secure groceries with.”
One last illustration of the truth of my dear adage — or its reverse — comes with a friendly staffer’s explanation of another glitch troubling Mi Bici. Seems that 3,600 people have signed up and paid, yet 1,000 of these — almost one-third — still haven’t gotten their keys.
“They don’t understand or they didn’t read how it works,” says the staffer, again proving that not knowing crucial details can throw a wrench into Mi Bici.