One Thousand City Bike Projects
  • The List
  • What's the difference?
  • In praise of small projects
  • Your corrections, additions?




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    		•  The following in-process listing includes operating projects as well as others still in the planning stage (i.e., at least budgeted for study), a number of which are due for 2008 opening. It includes large and smaller projects, different levels of automization, and some (a small minority) that are open seasonally. The best known of these are large sophisticated city-wide "private public transport" city bike projects, others (mostly the smaller ones) are aimed mainly at tourists. But all of them involve the principle of shared use, and every one represents a potential step to greater cycle use (if nothing else via "strength in numbers") and a more livable city for all.

    One thousand?

    Well, perhaps not quite yet, but here you have the better part of the first one hundred city bike projects, and while they are of many different sizes, types and levels of ambition, they all involve sharing bikes and all but a couple have been planned, built and brought on line in the last several years.

    Here is how our list looks as of this date, and you can be sure that we will be adding to it, fine tuning and when we can providing direct links so that you can have a look for yourself.

    We are betting that there will be more than one thousand city bike systems running in cities all over the world before the end of 2010, and as you can see, we are off to an encouraging start. Stay tuned.

    The list

    1. Aarhus, Denmark
    2. Aix-en-Provence, France
    3. Alba, Italy
    4. Albacete, Spain
    5. Albuquerque, NM, USA
    6. Alcalá de Henares, Spain
    7. Amiens, France
    8. Amsterdam, Netherlands
    9. Arlington, USA
    10. Ávila, Spain
    11. Bamberg
    12. Barakaldo, Spain
    13. Barcelona, Spain
    14. Bárcena de Cicero
    15. Bari, Italy
    16. Beijing, China
    17. Berlin, Germany
    18. Bern
    19. Besançon, France
    20. Bielefeld, Germany
    21. Bilbao, Spain
    22. Borgomanero
    23. Bra, Italy
    24. Brisbane
    25. Bristol, UK
    26. Brussels
    27. Burgos, Spain
    28. Caen, France
    29. Camargo, Spain
    30. Cameri, Italy
    31. Cartagena, Spain
    32. Castellbisbal, Spain
    33. Castellón, Spain
    34. Chicago, USA
    35. Chivasso, Italy
    36. Ciudad Real, Spain
    37. Cologne, Germany
    38. Copenhagen
    39. Córdoba, Spain
    40. Cottbus
    41. Cuneo, Italy
    42. Denia
    43. Denver
    44. Dijon, France
    45. Dos Hermanas, Spain
    46. Drammen
    47. Dresden, Germany
    48. Dublin
    49. Düsseldorf, Germany
    50. Eisenstadt, Germany
    51. Erlangen, Germany
    52. Farnborough
    53. Ferrol, El
    54. Florence, Italy
    55. Fossano
    56. Frankfurt, Germany
    57. Friedrichshafen, Germany
    58. Geneva
    59. Gijón, Spain
    60. Gothenburg
    61. Halle, Germany
    62. Helsinki
    63. Jerez de la Frontera, Spain
    64. Karlsruhe, Germany
    65. La Rochelle, France
    66. Lausanne
    67. Leipzig, Germany
    68. León, Spain
    69. Limoges, France
    70. Logroño, Spain
    71. London, UK
    72. Lugo
    73. Luxemburg
    74. Lyon, France
    75. Marseille, France
    76. Melbourne
    77. Montreal
    78. Mörbisch, Germany
    79. Mulhouse, France
    80. Munich, Germany
    81. Nantes, France
    82. Neuchatel
    83. Novara, Spain
    84. Oslo
    85. Ourense
    86. OV-Fiets
    87. Pamplona, Spain
    88. Paris, France
    89. Parma, Italy
    90. Perpignan
    91. Philadelphia, USA
    92. Pinerolo, Italy
    93. Pistoia, Italy
    94. Plasencia, Spain
    95. Ponferrada, Spain
    96. Porsgrunn, Spain
    97. Prato, Spain
    98. Puerto Lumbreras
    99. Reading, UK
    100. Reggio Emilia
    101. Rennes, France
    102. Reutlingen
    103. Rouen, France
    104. San Francisco
    105. San Vicente del Raspeig, Spain
    106. Sandnes
    107. Santa Monica
    108. Santander, Spain
    109. Santoña y Arnuero, Spain
    110. Savigliano, Italy
    111. Settimo Torinese
    112. Seville, Spain
    113. Sidney
    114. Sion
    115. Southampton, UK
    116. St. Andrä
    117. Stockholm
    118. Stuttgart, Germany
    119. Talavera
    120. Tel-Aviv, Israel
    121. Terrassa, Spain
    122. Thun
    123. Toronto
    124. Toulouse, France
    125. Trondheim
    126. Valladolid, Spain
    127. Vic
    128. Vienna
    129. Vitoria, Spain
    130. Washington D.C., USA

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    What are all these projects anyway?

    One of the most useful bottom-line ways ways of determining what kind of city bike project you have on your hands, or at planning to create, is the daily usage rate, targeted and actual. Paris, Barcelona, Lyons and some others are for example getting ten or more trips per day per bike, while a very large number of those now in service (see our latest draft list of this date which identifies close to one hundred public bike systems of different types and levels of ambition) are only getting one or two.

    What is the critical difference between these two "classes" of pubic bike project.

    • The first is that only with the high levels of trip turnover do you actually have what might legitimately be called a "public transport system" (or as they nicely call it in Lyons a "private public transport system").

    • Then, the lower levels of usage tend to be associated with the smaller and far less ambitious projects, most of which aim to attract and serve tourists. (And many of these last are manual or semi-manual, while the true city bike projects are all fully automated, while Paul DeMaio calls "Third generation systems")

    There are considerable advantages to opting for one of the smaller lower ambition systems, including much lower costs, faster planning and implementation, and less exposure to risks. Properly planned and implemented they also make a nice calling card for your city.

    And while the full scale city-wide 'private public transport systems' are the ones that are receiving all the media attention and are getting the full range of impacts targeted (new level of mobility, environmental, life quality, public health, economic, etc.), they require much greater care and more resources in planning, bringing on line, operating and maintenance so that those ten-plus trips per day levels of use can be maintained.

    Which kind should you be targeting for your city?

    It all boils down to the level of ambition you have for your city. A nice little shared bike project definitely has it attractions and uses,.

    But a full scale, high ambition City Bike project can be an important step in reinventing transport in your city and is the approach that fewer cities will target but with far greater results.

    It's your call.

    PS. And it's good not to underestimate the difficulty of the task of maintaining a bike which is being used by then-plus different people 365 days of the year. People with vastly different level of skill and appreciation of public property. Not easy, but possible - assuming you are very very good at what you do. ;-)

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    In praise of small projects

    The following point has been made by Esther Anaya, a technician with the Bicicleta Club de Catalunya (BACC) who has been very active in the last two years helping to encourage and support new projects in pPain:

    I would like to stress the point that manual or small scale systems are very important in Spain as introducers of the bicycle as an urban transport. There is little bicycle culture in Spain and only a few cities are trully compromised with cycling as urban transport (maybe San Sebastian and Sevilla).

    In most of our cities, public bikes are one of the first projects being made in favour of bicycles. In some cases, cities don't even have infrastructure for cycling! But they now have a brand new public bikes system.

    This can be good or bad, or both at the same time, because the mere introduction of public bikes can make the local authorities give more attention to cycling issues and build new infrastructure. And can also generate a large number of new cyclists. On the other hand, it is potentially bad -- because given there is not a lot of established public demand for the use of a bike, it can't be known whether the system is going to be used by a lot of people (who are not using the bike now) or not. Tthe estimation of demand is very complex in these cases.

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