Amadeus Consulting, a custom software development company, created the enterprise application system automating Denver B-cycle's innovative City of Denver Bike Sharing program. The project, scheduled to launch on April 22 in conjunction with Earth Day, is the first large-scale municipal bike-sharing program in the United States.Denver B-cycle placed dozens of bike station kiosks at locations in downtown Denver, Cherry Creek and Denver University. Leveraging Microsoft Silverlight™, among many other tools, Amadeus Consulting developed B-cycle's kiosk interface, customer Web services, Web-based administrative tool and iPhone™ application. Members of the Denver riding program will pick up and drop off B-cycle's signature red bikes at any of the bike centers. They will utilize the Web application to log in, view their bike usage, access trip information including time, cost and carbon offset.
"Amadeus Consulting has a wide breadth of knowledge and experience that has contributed significant value to this venture. They helped us navigate the technology and create an intelligent and easy-to-use enterprise system," said Lisa Dumont, digital product manager with Denver B-cycle.
Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags prevent theft. Amadeus Consulting also developed an iPhone application to complement B-cycle's system. The application allows riders to locate B-cycle bike stations, access their Web account and visit the B-cycle website. "Amadeus Consulting developed a truly amazing application. We are impressed with the skill level of the remarkable team that worked on the project," said Bob Burns, president of B-cycle. "We also greatly appreciated that Amadeus Consulting truly cares about sustainability and the mission, vision and values of our company."
The bike-sharing system includes the following features:
- Provides B-cycle bike users an intuitive interaction and seamless integration between the bike computer, kiosk hardware and Web services through a service-oriented architecture.
- Provides B-cycle bike users accessibility from anywhere in the city with an iPhone application.
- Lets B-cycle manage a variety of business processes with an easy-to-use administrative system including bike inventory, servicing and user statistics.
- Provides a secure custom e-commerce engine to handle B-cycle's payment transactions.
- Offers a scalable software solution to sustain B-cycle's extensive growth model.
"We were honored to work with B-cycle on such a ground-breaking project," said Lisa Calkins, chief executive officer at Amadeus Consulting. "Like B-cycle, we believe the bike sharing program will revolutionize how people get around the city of Denver. We're thrilled that our system will make it easy for bike users to locate and use B-cycle's bikes, track riding data and access their account from the Web and their iPhones. We look forward to seeing the program implemented first in Denver, and eventually across the country."