Image source: http://www.copenhagenize.com/2009/09/bike-share-design-competition-for.html |
"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 |
Public Bicycles in Zhangjiagang, China. Image taken from Bike Share Philadelphia Facebook Page (http://www.bikesharephilad |
- 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.
I agree, being able to cycle safely and efficiently are two very important points. And like you said, unless there is a system implemented that adheres to those two points, it can be hard to get a cycling culture going. We do think from a very automobile-centered perspective, especially here in North America, which has forced automobile culture to blossom (it is both safe and efficient in most people's eyes). If we shift the focus to more cycling-centered, the advantages from one to the other will automatically shift as well.
ReplyDelete