Do Bike Share Systems Create a Strong Cycling Culture?

The 519,000 people who live in the City of Copenhagen together own 560,000 bicycles. Despite the high rate of bicycle ownership, Copenhagen does have a public bikeshare system, which has existed since 1995. Users can deposit a 20DKK coin (approximately $3.76 CDN), and use the bike anywhere in the City Bike Zone, receiving their 20DKK upon returning the bike.

Image source: http://www.copenhagenize.com/2009/09/bike-share-design-competition-for.html

The City Bikes are easy to spot, and yet I've rarely seen them in use during my morning commute to downtown Copenhagen. I asked a few locals about the public bikeshare system, and it appears that they prefer using their own bicycles, claiming the system is used primarily by tourists. The City of Copenhagen seems to know this fact, and is committed to enhancing the current bikeshare system, as illustrated in this quote by Mayor Klaus Bondam:

"Much has happened since this Bike Share v. 1.0 was launched and, over the past ten years, many large cities now enjoy exciting, new bike share systems. From Barcelona to Beijing, a new generation of bike share systems have blossomed. To the delight of locals, tourists and commuters alike.

Copenhagen is a unique, world-class cycling city and this fact should be reflected in the city’s bike share system. Our city is the best example of how the bicycle can become the preferred form of transport in a modern city. An attractive and modern bike share system can contribute to strengthening Copenhagen’s bicycle culture. Therefore The City of Copenhagen is pleased to launch an open design competition in order to determine how a bike share system v. 3.0 would look and work in the city in the future."

The winning bike.
Image source: http://www.cphbikeshare.com/winners.aspx

With a winner being chosen, the City of Copenhagen appears to be moving forward with upgrading their current bikeshare system to one that caters to The Commuter, The Tourist, and The Copenhagener. More about the competition here. Although bikeshare systems seem to have less effect in countries with a strong cycling culture (for example, the Netherlands has no bikeshare systems, even though their cycling rates reach as high as 50-60%), they are making significant impacts in other parts of the world.

Public Bicycles in Zhangjiagang, China. Image taken from Bike Share Philadelphia Facebook Page
(http://www.bikesharephiladelphia.org/)

Going back to the question "Do Bike Share Systems Create a Strong Cycling Culture?" - I'd say most definitely yes. If you look at the successes of bikeshare systems around the world, you'll see that this is true. Take these examples:
- Paris' bikeshare system logged their 100,000,000th trip last week. Watch the video.
- With only 2 small areas served, Seoul's bikeshare system in Korea surpassed over 100,000 trips since 2010. Read more.
- Since 2009, Dublin Region's bikeshare system has had over 500,000 trips with a population of 1.2 million people.
- Two different bikeshare systems in China have 100,000 bicycles combined! To provide a scale, the entire country of France has less than 42,000 bikes in their public bikeshare systems.

From my experiences, people want to cycle more, but they want to do so safely and efficiently. And why not? Cycling is cheap, environmentally friendly, healthy, and enjoyable. If we want a sustainable future for the Region of Waterloo and beyond, we need to start thinking seriously about cycling.

Information sourced from Copenhagenize.com and The Bike-Sharing Blog.