Paris France just placed 10,000 bikes in its city for public use. Placed at over 750 bike pickup locations, bikes can be rented by the hour, with increased costs for time used (encouraging fast turnover of bikes so they're mostly used for short trips).
Bikes can then be returned to any service point so one-way trips are no problem...and locations will be close to major public transportation routes.
Paris officials think it will help their citizens navigate around the city (as bikes are better than public transit for shorter trips) and will help keep their citizens fit.
This is an interesting idea for Kansas City -- especially in leu of having a well-developed public transit system. Granted, a lot of work needs to be done to improve the bike-friendliness of our city and I have no idea how they plan to prevent the bikes from being stolen...
What a great idea . . . you could set it up weekly where you can rent a key to the locks and use the bikes from whichever station you'd like, whenever you need to or want to. Sure, some bikes might get stolen - the $1-2 million investment (which could be cut in half with sponsorship or ad flags, etc.) for the city is not that big of a risk to see if people would use it. Don't know how well it would work December - March (I know I'm not out on my bike then) but I am in!! We can make them orange - now THAT would be a revolution.
Posted by: KC Sponge | July 25, 2007 at 12:06 PM