bikeshare

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.

I was going to blog about the new Gucci bike but in my attempt to ask the question:

"What does it mean when the likes of Chanel, Gucci and Paul Frank are designing bikes to sell lifestyle? but I found this article a lot more interesting. (stay tuned for my blog entry about pop fashion co-opting the bicycle)

In today's Le Monde, Jaque Fortier reports that politicians in Strasbourg, France are vying for the cyclist vote. Where 7-10% of trips are made by bicycle,the cyclist vote is one that could make the difference, so every politician is rolling out its bicycle program....Barak, Hillary....what are your bicycle programs?