Thank you, Chic Cyclist for a link to a very good article about Boston's coming experiment in Velib style bike sharing. The Boston Globe article "Is Boston Ready for a Revolution?" lays out the Boston Mayor's plan to have the biggest bike sharing program in the Americas. Quite a feat for a city that usually scores very badly in bike safety. Will it work? The author of the piece, Tom Matlack travels to Paris to see the real deal. The Parisian version of bike sharing is huge. 20,000 bikes spread all over the city. While it has it's share of problems, it is according to this article changing Paris. They have seen an explosion in cycling.
But will it work in Beantown? The streets aren't known for bike friendliness and car drivers are worse. I'd say that if it works in Boston, it'll work anywhere. I wish them much luck.
Photo by Lilia of Velo Vogue
Also, if you want to see how Velib works, check out Velo Vogue's recent blogs on the subject. They get into the nuts and bolts of the Parisian bike sharing program. Nice pics too.
2 comments:
Interesting. We plan to write about Citybikes on our blog (the shared bikes in Vienna), so then you can get an impression of how small bike share programs work in big cities. In Vienna there are at the moment only 50 stations. Do you know how many you will get?
The Mpls. program has been delayed until 2010. It suppose to have 1000 bikes. I don't know how many stations.
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