Carbusters magazine is the quarterly journal of the global carfree movement, which promotes alternatives to private motor vehicle use. They had a good in-depth article on how these bikesharing programs work--it was either issue 30 or 31. They should post it on their website -- www.carbusters.org -- but have not yet. Ask that they do.

It's a pity that the DC program bears the taint of media monster Clear Channel; $40/year seems a bit much to ask when one considers the value of the deal granted to CC.

Biking is sensible but most people are not. Even as cycling and public transportation make more inroads in USA, China, India and elsewhere see their populations buying cars in unprecedented numbers. Being selfish, short-sighted, and lazy is not a strictly American phenomenon, although here it has been taken to the extreme.

Buckminster Fuller maintained that people "emerge through emergency," meaning that they don't change their behavior until they're forced to by circumstance. Unfortunately, by the time people face up to our global climate emergency, it will be too late. It probably is too late, already.

Even so, it's best to do what one can. Every car that's taken off the road is an improvement of civic space.

I know this article is a bit old now, but I wanted to add one thing.

For obvious reasons, riding a bike ought to be encouraged whenever possible. Not only does it reduce emissions and petroleum use, but it gives pleasure, puts you in touch with your environment, and confers many important health benefits.

If you have a bicycle that is not being used, however, please consider donating it to an organization like Bikes Not Bombs or your local equivalent. In many places in Central America and Africa, bicycles can bring substantial changes in the quality of life of rural people, enabling them not only to get places more easily but also to extract well water, to grind grain, etc.

Why does any bike program have to pay for itself..
Not since the Los Angeles Blue Line light rail started in 1989 have the fare's collected for the Blue Line ever paid the cost of collecting them...(and that new train alone DOUBLED RAIL DEATH IN THE USA THAT YEAR by stalling every East-West roadway for it's full twenty five miles, doubling smog from the poor's old cars and ruining their commutes, BECAUSE "THEY" LIED about "grade separation".
If i ride the Metro-Link to Acton from LA, i pay $12 bucks and the tax-payer pays $34 for my one way ride.
Air fare in America is 40% subsidized by tax dollars (but not MY "employee" transportation costs).
Bus and train station's are sellouts for "Advertising", covering and desecrating miles of public art, with a net $0 return when MTA's real labor & repainting costs are counted.
Smell "Sweethart" deal, like LA's 5000+ un-permitted and un-taxed ClearChanel 30 ton, 3 storie-tall billboards...10% of the MTA's yearly budget is NOT tax dollars from another source.
I started riding a bike in LA when i turned 50, generally i can beat the MTA bus for miles if i try. 3am is the safest time in the larger city, but street slots, missing asphalt near bus stops and "rills" and humps created when hot asphalt piles up are deadly. A type of Zen "be here now" is your only defense.
The LA Mayor had a front page (second section) picture supporting bike riding in this city the morning after CriticalMass was jammed and arrested by the hundreds one afternoon during the 2000 Democratic Convention. See la.indymedia.org
They won a $million a few years later for that August 2000 set-up and felony action of the LAPD.
Bikes won't pay this city's salaries, and that is where the lies and fake-outs start.
Solution: free public jitneys, buses and bikes
will allow millions of road lanes and parking spaces to return to the tax rolls and/or to the commons for solar power and community food production
See the bus study done at Long Beach State Collage

Hi Mike Corbeil;

If you ever pass through Northern California, let me know, (I live in Grass Valley-for real-maybe we make our paths cross.

Not bike paths, then we'd crash.

Rather Potpaths, which makes spotting pesky pot-holes easier.

A la shrooms-pick and eat one, you start seeing them better....

Good idea; just need to manage them so that they work and for ... long.

Several fine posts have been made; I appreciated a few or more of them (won't get detailed about it).

But I have a particularly liking for the following.

"mikepeters April 27th, 2008 7:54 pm

...

Move to the mountains.

Grow your own."

Hmmmm. Now I don't know what Mike has in mind, but given that he didn't specify, well, ideas come to my mind and the bells are a-ringing for treats time; sound or sure seem good to me. It's better when it's not only a question of sounding or seeming like a good idea, but experientially so, instead; but, alas, well, dreams are all the poor have, mostly anyway. Nature has all the medicinals that I could need, really; the problem being to learn what they or enough of them all are, and the details about dosage and how to use.

Bicycling is as technologically close to Nature as we can get; putting aside hockey sticks, baseball bats, and other things that are technologically made. After all, these items are wood, leather, ..., which is all natural product.

Anyway, the two make a good combo; only, if you toke and then bike, then be extra careful for potholes.

Check out this awesome grocery transporter:

http://www.xtracycle.com/

Not practical in ALL cases, but practical in MANY cases.

A good idea, but not real practical in a lot of cases, as we live more than 30 miles from where my husband works. Plus bikes are not real practical when you're grocery shopping, running errands, etc...

Har Davids,

"We are used to each other's presence on the road." This explains it, Har. I was amazed by the skillful manuevering of the bikers between pedestrians, other bikers, and autos. When I return to Holland, I'd like to take a leisurely bike ride around the country. You and your fellow citizens have much to be proud of.

jclientelle,

I beg your pardon, but New Jerseyans think New York City drivers are impatient and not very courteous on the road to other motorists. Especially the taxi drivers.

moggio,

An inspiring post.

Galen China will now drive electric cars.

We have potholes that would cripple a wheel and swallow a helmet. We have crazies who crowd you into ditch just watch you bounce. We have drivers who worship the cell phone.

I wil buy bike when gas sells for $10 a gallon and there is an extra tax on vehicles based on engine displacement; $10 a cubic inch sounds about right.

I ride my bike to work every day, and I've been doing it since 1991.

I learned from the Dutch on a trip to Europe in 1990.

More and more people here in New Jersey are cycling to the train station for their commute to The City.

Biking is fun, and keeps one in touch with the elements, I feel a new, more profound appreciation of life is attained by transiting on the greatest invention.

I think money spent on bike sharing, is better than money spent on war machines.

The people that will do bike sharing are already the people that take care of the earth. They will be riding in the non-existent bike lanes while gas guzzling SUV drivers whiz past so close that the wind almost knocks them over.

Why would it cost $4,500 a year for a $200 bike?

Our government needs to make it safe to ride around town on a bicycle!

They tell you are just like a car but not so, if you hogged a whole lane people would run over you. You are left to ride the strip on the other side of the white line and hope nobody is texting on the phone!

Most cities are not planned for BICYCLES!

USE A REARVIEW-MIRROR THAT CLIPS ON TO YOUR HELMET OR GLASSES! You have to see the side of the car that's passing you. I trust nobody! Always leave yourself an out if things go wrong.

I learned to ride in downtown/urban traffic growing up and I used every nook and cranny shortcut to avoid traffic when I could. I use eye contact and hand signals to move through traffic and I am aware of everything bad that could happen. I ALWAYS LEAVE MYSELF AN ESCAPE ROUTE!

Stop, Please.

We DON'T need private/government help to ride bikes. Or own them.

We DO need government help funding Education, Housing and Employment programs in cities like DC and Detroit so they become SAFE enough to ride in.

As is, NO lock is good enough and one is likely to get SHOT for a bike.

Signed, A Yellow Dog Democrat.

The program in Portland was/is called "yellow bikes", (the white bikes are memorials for bicyclists killed by motor vehicles.) , they were totally free, no need for a credit card, just get on and ride, leave out for the next person. They were donated and found bikes restored by a non profit group. Worked for a while but I think they ran out of funding which wasn't much funding to begin with. It could be kept up without much money at all from a local government.

bike sharing might work in ann arbor, but i doubt if it could help detroit--a sprawling, dangerous city.

still, with a local bike rental in each suburb and a better transit system (and way more than 3 hours allowed per trip) and buses with bike racks, it could help.

I like bikes

Biking is Cool.

Except most Americans spend more time eating (all day) than excersizing (never).

Thus bikes are ill-suited to their needs.

I'm old and have ridden a bike for transportation for years.

I just try and stay out of the way of the SUV's.

Sell your car.

Move to the mountains.

Grow your own.

lf God wanted man to ride bicycles he never would have invented the infernal combustion engine.

Portland OR had a 'white bicycle' program a long time ago. I don't know its present status. It was run by volunteers and there were no charges.

About 30 yrs ago a friend of mine went for a holiday in Russia. She was amazed at the water vending machines found every where, throughout the cities.
One would put a coin into the slot.. a GLASS glass would move under the spigot and fill.. one would drink the water and place the empty glass in a rack at the side of the machine...she mentioned to her host, how this would never work in the west, as someone would most certainly steal the glasses left unattended at the machine, to which her host replied "Why, I thought a rich country like that would not have a cup shortage?"

So it goes.. there will be so many of those bicycles stolen,torn apart and sold as parts, even as scrap, because of the greed driven Wester culture, that it will never work..sad but also true I'm afraid.

jim
canada
jim_murray@jdz.ca

I live in Holland, where one of the first bike-sharing experiments in Amsterdam didn't work out. Luckily we've got more bikes than people, and we tend to use our bikes a lot, so sharing might work on a very different basis than it does in France, where the system is really great, those bikes are everywhere and it only takes a credit-card to rent one.

The concept of bike sharing is not new to US-there are small cities and towns that have this system in place although actually in some, no cost involved.
We MUST as a country get into better solutions for transportation. I would argue that it is critical to our survival that this become a primary issue to get our legislators both state level and national, to address immediately and in the long term.

Back when car culture was taking off, during the 50s, China was derided for it population riding bikes while Western countries were buying gas guzzling steel behemoths.

Now the positions are reversing.

China is succumbing to car culture, and Western society is going back to the bicycle, the first true personal vehicle out of necessity.

And all too soon China and the rest of the world will be back to bikes, and long haul transportation is back to steam trains and sailing ships.

By all accounts, the Paris bike-share has been a great success. How ironic that cultures that have been bike driven for years are turning to mass-auto transport while we in the west are just now learning that bikes might be part of the solution to urban congestion and pollution. Could it be that we're just too impatient and have to move too fast?

Peaceman,

In Holland we are indeed purposefull drivers and since lots of people drive a car and ride a bike we are used to each other's presence on the road. I use my bike as much as I can, and I can understand your 'worries' about the bikers; I couldn't my Canadian brother-in-law to accompany me on a ride to the downtown market. But he had misgivings about our way of driving cars, too.

Portland, Oregon has its program. The depressed town of Waldport, Oregon has had a public/priivate "Green Bike" program operating for the past 4 years now which is also used as a Bicycle Mechanic training program at the local high school. It was ridiculed at first and initially saw a high theft/vamdilism rate over the first 18 months, but is now highly revered and well used. Waldport's "urban" population is 2050, and about two dozen bikes are available at any one time. There is no fee. You just park the bike in an easy acessible area after you're finished.

Furthermore, in Davis, California, where I lived during the 1960s, we tried to launch a simiilar program, but it failed because everyone owned and rode a bike--a somehwat unique culture in the USA at the time to be sure. But the program in this article is not the first of its kind in the USA.

The more bikes on the road the safer it is for all bikes. Don't wait for gasoline prices to go on up, start riding now. A study in Florida found that when the percentage of bicycles (as in percent of total vehicles on the road) increased just 2%, safety increased enormously. This was more important for bike safety than bike helmets. The main reason is that the cars and SUVs learned to expect and look for bicycles.

When riding your bike, use front and rear lights, follow the traffic rules, bike with the flow, stop for signs and lights, and stay off the sidewalks.

Except for in the parks, riding a bike around NYC is not an activity for the faint of heart. A friend of mine was killed on a bike and I was never at ease when one of my sons grown insisted on working as a bike messenger

We need bike lanes to be safe from taxis, buses and drivers from New Jersey.

I was so impressed with the city of Paris while on vacationing this past year. I was told the government provided one or two million bikes for free and the bike racks were everywhere. Not to mention the wonderful subway sytem.

Har Davids: The Netherlands is a wonderful country, the people are very nice, and I fell in love with Amsterdam, but I got to tell you, I worried more about folks on bicycles than in automobiles. The Dutch "ride with a purpose" and a great deal of confidence. They zoom down the streets. Even at night. Awesome.

Jim_Murray: What an interesting story unrelated to bikes but probably pertinent to this article. In the 1970's I used to read a magazine on sociology published by Rutgers University in New Jersey, called 'Transaction and Society'. High quality articles by acedemics and I fondly remember one about Russia. The essence of one article said that the Russians wouldn't think of stealing from another person, but thought it was okay to "pilfer" from the government. Conditions have changed, of course.