A bit more on bike-sharing programs
Posted on November 9th, 2008 – 10:20 PMBy Roadguy
The New York Times takes this look at the wild success that some cities in Europe are having.
3 Responses to "A bit more on bike-sharing programs"
Before people get too excited, the article points out a number of reasons why it is not likely to work as well here.
I can see it working reasonably well in Manhattan (I’m guessing that the rest of New York is a little more open and larger distances) and the cores of some of the other large cities in the east. They are more compact and difficult to drive in. They also have much milder weather.
We have more distance, so there are many fewer less than 30 minute trips that people want to do.
We also have a large part of the year when MOST people are not interested in riding a bike.
I suspect that most of the people who are really the target customers here already have bikes and use them for commuting.
Europe is a little more on the cutting edge than the USA. Like it or not, most people here are “Can’t take my car unless from my cold-dead-fingers” mindset.
I did a lot more bad-weather commuting by bike this year because of a cold-dead CAR.
Amazing what we can do if we have to, but I can’t tell others what they have to do. I hope that by offering the alternative, it might work a little in the downtown/uptown areas.
Cycling doesn’t stop in Amsterdam and Copenhagen in the cold, wet, dark winters. I’ve been in Amsterdam in January, and although there aren’t as many bikes then as in the summer, the bike routes are full of tracks. In Minneapolis, the Midtown Greenway used to have just a few tracks in the fresh snow, but in the past year, it’s been hard to count them. If you don’t let the bike lanes pile up with slop and ice, you will have cyclists year-round.
