London prepares for their bikeshare, the Times sheds some ups and downs

Posted July 8th, 2008 by Tania Lo

With many major cities in North America engaged in expression of interests, request for proposals to install their own bikeshare program. It is interesting to read about the ups and downs that Paris' Velib program is experiencing.

I find it pretty incredible that they have set the stage for all of us to learn from. While Charles Bremner, in today's The Times, from the UK chooses to dwell on the negative, I think the real story is that the bikeshare program has increased bike modeshare by numbers we could only dream of!

Here are some highlights:

cycle traffic has jumped by 70 per cent
vélibs are used for
120,000 trips a day
vélibs have been taken on a ride 27 million times
the city of Paris has made about €30 million profit in the first year

The article even mentions that accident rates for cyclists are down 20% but instead focuses on 3 tragic cyclist deaths.

To read the full story, go to:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4289943.ece

Related Links

A year on, the cycle experiment has hit some bumps

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Tags: accidents, bikeshare, london, modeshare, paris, Velib

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..and how about CARS?

On July 8th, 2008 Flying_Bicycle says:

It's interesting that they choose to focus on 3 tragic bicycle-related deaths... would 3 tragic automobile-related deaths be treated as such?

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noting the deaths are important

On July 9th, 2008 shmooth says:

i really think us cyclists need to get over the whole 'omg, another cyclist dead -- boo hoo' thing.

To me, every car-kills-cyclist death is completely unacceptable -- it's not something that us cyclists should view as some sort of loss in the public relations arena. Every death needs to be recognized and used positively to rally the public and politicians to make the streets safer for cyclists.

If the Times decides to mention the fact that people are being killed on their bikes, then that is called reporting - nothing more. The article doesn't harp. People have suffered tremendously. I say we have some respect for the victims - not the people who died, but the people who are left behind. I can hardly imagine. What would you do if you lost a child?

The solution, of course, is not banning bikes, but making the streets safer for bikes. We now know how to do it. Physically separated bike lanes, and traffic calming - it's not rocket science.

Let's not give the Times or anyone else the chance to cite death statistics ever again - unless they're in the 'decreasing' or 'zero' range.