Bike-Sharing Around The World

What is Bike-Sharing?
If you are at all familiar with the Zip Car model of car-sharing, then you should already undersand how bike-sharing works. Essentially, in a bike-share program bicycles are made available at special kiosks or racks that are strategically placed around a city. Users can access the bikes 24 hours a day, either by inserting a credit card or by paying an annual fee for a membership card. The bikes can then be returned at any of the stations in the city. While the details of the program vary by city, the basic concept has caught on and spread like wildfire. In fact, there was even a bike-sharing program in place at this year's Democratic National Convention!

Bike-Sharing Goes Global
Especially as gas prices rise and the concept of livable cities becomes more popular, cities around the world have begun to embrace bike-sharing as a way to improve quality of life, meet greenhouse gas reduction targets, increase tourism, and so on. Paris, Barcelona, Washington, D.C., Montreal and Mexico City have all implemented such programs, while New York City, Portland and others are in the planning stages.

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Comments

[mouselion]

I witnessed a group of twenty-somethings who took over the Common Ground (an old restaurant collective that survived from the seventies until recently here in Vermont) about five or six years ago, take dilapidated old bikes that they scavenged or bought at tag sales for peanuts and piece them together to make a fleet of about a dozen bicycles which they left unlocked on a bike rack in the Harmony parking lot (a central place in downtown Brattleboro). Anybody (mainly teens and twenty-somethings participated) could take one and ride to where they needed to go and then return it when they finished. They even held their own Critical Mass events. And, boy did they have some interesting bike creations! It seemed to work just fine, lasting for a couple of years until the kids involved mostly moved on to other places -- college, jobs or whatever. I think if they'd stayed, it'd still be going on. It was completely free, too.

[MKJeeves]

What about helmets? Who is responsible if a person gets hit by a car?

[Swerinjer]

You are. The law will be written that MKjeeves will pay for any accidents. You can try to leave the country but you won't get far when your passport is revoked. Thanks for volunteering.

[mapleman]

who do you think? YOU.
freedom to be and do what we wan in this country, yet not taking the 'freedom' to be responsible for the hot coffee they serve at McDonalds, or wearing a helmet?
the end of republican-mastered whining, blame of others and frivolous lawsuits can't come any sooner

[mapleman]

who do you think? YOU.
freedom to be and do what we want in this country, yet not taking the 'freedom' to be responsible for the hot coffee they serve at McDonalds, or wearing a helmet?
the end of republican-mastered whining, blame of others and frivolous lawsuits can't come any sooner

[fumes]

no brainer there: god is responsible, he made the earth and everything in it including you and your bicycle and that driver and that car! it certainly can't be you for getting into the path of the car, and it certainly can't be the driver of the car who didn't see you in time. what a silly question!