Recent Streetsblog CHICAGO posts about bike sharing

Why Aren’t American Bike-Share Systems Living Up to Their Potential?

| | No Comments
As policy director at the New York City Department of Transportation from 2007 to June, 2014, Jon Orcutt shepherded the nation’s largest bike-share system through the earliest stages of planning, a wide-ranging public engagement process, and, last year, the rollout of hundreds of Citi Bike stations. That makes Orcutt, formerly of Transportation Alternatives and the Tri-State Transportation […]

Transpo Leaders Brainstorm at the Shared-Use Mobility Center Launch

| | 1 Comment
Transportation leaders from across the nation convened last week in Chicago to celebrate the launch of the Shared-Use Mobility Center, a nonprofit that will work to maximize the potential of car-sharing, ride-sharing, and bike-sharing services to benefit the public. The new organization will promote collaboration between the different services, and encourage cooperation between the growing […]

Alta Chief: Bike-Share Expansions Unlikely in 2014

| | No Comments
Despite continually growing ridership, Alta Bicycle Share-operated bike-share systems across America will probably not be adding bikes or docks this year. The bankruptcy of Montreal-based Public Bike Share Company, known as Bixi, which developed and manufactured the equipment that Alta’s systems use, has disrupted the supply chain that numerous cities were pinning their expansion plans […]

Paris Vélib’ Launches Bike-Share for Kids

| | No Comments
While in the U.S., bike-share systems are issuing threatening letters to parents who invent ways to tote their kids along, Paris is pioneering bike-share for the under-10 set. As far as we know, P’tit Vélib’ is the first of its kind in the world. In June, Vélib’ made 300 kids’ bikes available in five locations […]

Why TIME Magazine Got the Bixi Story Wrong

| | No Comments
Major media have a habit of blowing bike-share problems out of proportion. Witness the 2009 BBC story that cast theft and vandalism as an existential threat to Velib in Paris. Five years later, Velib is still going strong. The most recent entry in the genre is Christopher Matthews’ misguided story on the Bixi bankruptcy in […]

How Do You Grade a Bike-Share System?

| | No Comments
Bike-share has exploded in the last decade — and in North America, just in the last few years. What started as a shaky concept in Amsterdam in the 1960s has matured into a viable transit option worldwide, with 600 systems offering more than 600,000 bikes. The nonprofit Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) is […]