Posts tagged “bike share”  

It's free bike day in France with Velobleu, another bike-share program in France.

Photo: Getty

Related Posts:

• Velib: A-Holes #$%^ing it Up
• Velib Success
• Velib Birthday

Andrew Heining tipped us to a post he wrote for the CS Monitor blog about a Bike Sharing Energy concept designed by Chiyu Chen, a design student at the Royal College of Art.

Users check out specially designed bikes from a locking station using an ID card. Inside the bikes is a system that stores kinetic energy generated from braking. Riders go where they need to, and when they're finished, bring the bike back to the locking station. Locking up the bike transfers the energy generated by the trip into the city grid - or, as Chen envisions, into a hybrid bus system.

Cool.

Also noticed on

• Inhabit
• Yanko Design
• Endgadget

Last year in Taipei, we along with everyone else, were amazed by the increase in ridership and cyclists. Following that up, Taipei is testing a Bike Share program. They've already got Bike Parking. Eric Mah, Marketing Specialist from Dahon demonstrates how it works in this video

Bike Share aside, I dig that Giant bike with its funky-fender, dynamo hub, and all.

Eric is blogging about biking to work with his co-workers, including the gas masks they wear.

Hugga met up with B-cycle at SXSW during the Mobile Social and interviewed them about their plans to change the world with bikes.

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This man wants to change the world with this bike and we want to help him do it. Learn more at the B-Cycle site.

Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.

SXSW posted on the bike-related activities at the Interactive Festival this year, including our Mobile Social and Friday's Featured Speaker: Alex Bogusky. Alex is an ad guy (Crispin Porter + Bogusky) who's partned with Humana and Trek bicycles on B-Cycle.

B-Cycle is an audacious plan to re-center the world to bikes and is about freedom, independence, forward momentum, and prosperity. A business plan from bike heaven.

I'll miss that talk because I'm on the Make Yourself Interesting Panel at the same time, but we'll have Galen et al. there.

Bike Sharing Boston is in the news with the city releasing an RFP.

Users would swipe some form of plastic - an ATM, credit or Charlie card - to rent the bikes for a fee that will likely range between $2 to $5 an hour, said Jim Hunt, the city's chief of environment and energy.

Officials eventually hope to expand the network to 600 stations in the greater metropolitan area with 6,000 bikes. I been to Boston a few times, have never ridden there, but it didn't strike me as particularly bike friendly. The Boston Daily reports that Bicycle Magazine consistently ranks Boston as one of the worst biking cities.

Any readers from Boston? Is is rideable?

In another example of a-holes ruining it for everyone else, and another dent in my Euro Bike Utopia fantasy, the Velib bike share program is in jeopardy.

While millions of trips we’re ridden, Velib Extreme also emerged with vandals riding the bikes down steps, into metro stations, and on BMX tracks.

I remember YellowBike efforts being derailed by theft as well, even after they painted the bikes bright yellow.

According to press reports over the weekend, Washington DC is launching the first bike share program in the US. It works like Zipcar with an annual fee, stations, and 120 bikes. The SmartBikeDC bikes are three-speed, upright “comfort” bikes. They feature mudguards to prevent the rider from getting wet, chain guards to keep clothes from getting caught, front and rear lights that turn on in the dark and easily adjustable seats.

More reports

• Bike-share Blog
• Bicycle-Sharing Program to Be First of Kind in US
• Washington turning to bike-sharing plan

1200 yellow bikes were donated to Burning Man for a Burning Bike Share program with lots of reaction from the community.

Also check the Burning Man Bike Ride on YouTube and Simone’s Burner Bike below.

Paris launched Velib, a bike share service, over the weekend. Velib is a combination of velo and liberty and for Parisians is another public transport option. Check our posts on Bike Share, Velib in the news, on Flickr, and blogs.

“This is about revolutionizing urban culture”

NYTimes also reported on the story.

… and that makes Seattle’s Master Plan even more depressing. Photo credit malias.

During the Tour de France, the Forum for Urban Design and Storefront for Art and Architecture “is revolutionizing transportation networks and greening the urban fabric” with a Bike Share Project demonstration. That’s about the coolest thing to do in NYC that I could imagine and can only hope the demonstration turns into a project like Pamplona, Lyon, Paris, Barcelona, Stockholm and Oslo. On a more local scale, with less design aesthetic and catchy slogans, is Buffalo Blue Bicycle or the Vancity Bike Share.

Updated

A reader pointed us to a newswire story today on Paris being a city of lovers and bikes, with the whole city becoming a bike zone.

Giant Bicycles | “Here-to-There” Bike Share Program

North Carolina's Greensboro College is providing 30 free bikes to students, faculty and staff for on-campus use.

Bikes, from Giant's Suede comfort line, are supposed to be parked at three bike racks on campus, and include cables with combination locks. When riders get to their destination, they're to lock the bikes at another of the racks. The program kicked off March 17.

The whole program was underwritten by a local bike shop Cycles de Oro, and its employees.

Also:

cyclesdeoro.com | "From Here to There" kick off celebration photo gallery