Features

The sight was simply staggering – even for a longtime bicycle commuter like Jeff Miller.

It was September 20, 2010, and Miller was among the hundreds of eager Washington, DC, residents who flocked to participate in the grand unveiling of a state-of-the-art, $6-million public bicycle sharing system. In all his travels during a round-the-world bicycle research project, and all his years as a bicycle advocate, Miller had never seen anything like the debut of Capital Bikeshare.

“There were just hundreds upon hundreds of uniform bikes in perfect rows,” he said.

The bicycles from the BIXI bike share system in Montreal, QC – run by the private non-profit Public Bike System Company – looked nothing like the hybrid Miller, the president of the Alliance for Biking & Walking, rides to the office. They’re built to withstand the elements and appeal to all riders. Each of the 1,100 BIXI bikes lined up before the buzzing crowd had come fully equipped with fenders, lights, front rack, chain guard, three-speed internal hub gears and a bulky step-through frame. Once the CaBi bikes were in place, residents and tourists would pay an annual, monthly, daily or one-time fee to check one of them out, ride it to another destination and return it to a kiosk near their destination (see sidebar: Bike Share 101).

“European cities view bike sharing as a simple solution to community enjoyment and sustainability, and now, North American cities are catching on,” said Kit Keller, executive director of the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals. “From San Antonio to Boston, San Francisco to New York City, US cities are embracing this new way of drawing and keeping young, creative people in their economy.”

And putting bicycles at the fingertips of the masses is having a tremendous impact on bicycling culture and mode share. As Pete Stidman, director of the Boston Cyclists Union, suggested: “If cycling is some kind of crazy drug that makes us happier, healthier and better-looking, then bike share is the gateway drug.”

Fare-free to Free Market

Bike-sharing has evolved dramatically since its humble beginnings nearly 50 years ago.

In 1965, the Witte Fietsen (White Bikes) program debuted in Amsterdam. The idea was simple – citizens found a public bike, rode it to their destination and left it for the next user. But bikes were stolen, vandalized, even tossed into the canals. The program collapsed within days. Other cities and advocates tried similar decentralized schemes, including Green Bikes in Cambridge, UK, and the Yellow Bike Project in Portland, OR. Both suffered the same fate as the White Bikes.

In 1995, the city of Copenhagen, Denmark, launched their “Bycyklen,” or City Bikes, a fleet of much sturdier rides that could be picked up and returned to specific locations around the city with a coin deposit. Soon after, the Bikeabout program at Portsmouth University in England took it one step further: For a small fee, students were issued magnetic cards to check out bicycles from fully automated kiosks. The program fizzled because of its small size, but the system itself was a winner.