Chicago would have 3,000 bicycles to rent from 300 stations by next summer — with no charge for the first 30 minutes — under an ambitious plan in the works aimed at making cycling a “new transit system.”
Former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s dream of creating a Paris-style bike rental program in Chicago is about to take off, with the city issuing a “request for proposals” (RFP) for a grand plan bigger than Daley envisioned.
Red double-decker buses and black cabs have long been iconic symbols of London, but Britain's capital may soon become just as famous for its distinctive blue and silver rental bicycles.
As its public transit system struggles to cope with growing passenger loads, London is starting to embrace cycling. This year it launched a new bicycle-sharing system that allows residents to rent a bicycle from hundreds of locations in central London.
A Balham biker has gone into the cycling community’s record books by becoming the rider of the one millionth Barclays cycle hire journey.
And as a special thank you, the banking giant awarded 37-year-old Rupert Parson and three friends annual membership of the scheme for five years - as well as a cycling makeover at Bobbins Bicycles in Islington.
Mr Parson said: “It was a complete surprise, and I have to say that I thought it might be a practical joke when first took the phone call.
European cities, which have been promoting bicycle-sharing programs as a way to cut pollution and ease traffic, have another selling point this week: transit strikes, such as those hitting London and Paris.
When London rolled out Europe's latest bike-sharing program in July, environmental and public-health groups embraced it. Mayor Boris Johnson called it a "revolution in cycling" and said he hoped it would lead to tens of thousands more bike trips in the city every day.
8 Sep 2010
Scotland’s first public bike hire scheme that is backed by the Government was launched in Dumfries yesterday in a bid to mimic the success of similar initiatives across Europe.
Under the Bike2Go scheme, 30 bikes have been made available at nine automated docking stations around the town, which users can access on a 24-hour basis by entering a PIN and riding them away.
The sad recent news story about a 5-year-old girl killed by a street-cleaning vehicle while riding bikes with her father in the Turkish province of Konya -- a city that had previously announced plans for the country's first bike-sharing program -- got me thinking about what it would really take to create a
Sami recently wrote about the new Sobi bike system; It is a wonderful concept, and very different from bike sharing systems we have seen in Paris, Montreal and other cities. Urban systems like Velib in Paris or Bixi in Montreal are expensive to set up and maintain.
London's new bike rental scheme, like Paris's velib scheme before it, may be a huge hit. But there's a young upstart on the block that is looking to offer an alternative to these large-scale schemes—and it says it can make ordinary bike owners some money in the process.
Scrambling down the stairs, looking for a clean pair of jeans it dawned on me. I am going to be late to yet another meeting! TfL had contacted me last Friday to see if I wanted to test the new cycle hire scheme bike. I was happy to oblige but with a pending trip to Argentina in three days I was finding myself even less organised than usual. As I powered my way through London to get to Victoria Street and the TfL press offices I pondered how many people had tried out the bike. I must be in the first few. Also, what would the bike be like? Fast, slow, comfortable, cumbersome?
Cycling advocates say Auckland will lose a valuable extension of its public transport system if a bike rental operator is squeezed out by the city council.
The council has ordered rental operator Nextbike to remove 69 of its 170 bikes from street fixtures by the end of the month, to comply with a resource consent and free its bike racks for general cyclists.
But the company, which says it provides 55 per cent of rides on its bikes free to 2000 registered users, says that unless it can expand its fleet it will have to pull the plug on a loss-making operation.