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Originally Posted by the urban politician
Does anybody else think bike sharing is starting to become a bit of a fad?
It seems to have this "me too" thing, with it spreading all over the country so quickly.
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I'm starting to wonder. I hardly ever see any bike share program bikes out on the streets, and I don't see them locked up at the typical bike parking areas. Austin is such a big bicycle city anyway. I think that most riders here already have a bike and wouldn't ever straddle a clunky bike share bike, and the people who don't care to ride at all, don't.
I've also seen some private companies that offer bikes. There's one such location near downtown. It's on a street that runs by what is Austin's equivalent of Central Park. That would seem like a good idea, but every time I've ridden my bike past their store I can't help but think that it's a bit obsolete at that location. By then if you're at that point then you're almost at your destination. That park hosts Austin's big (70K audience) music festivals. The City has done a lot to encourage people to ride their bikes to these events, which they do. The bike racks are typically covered with thousands of bikes since there's very little parking close by. Most people if they're going to ride a bike to those festival, are going to take their own, and so they're most likely coming from a good ways a way. I ride 15+ miles round trip to get there myself. It just seems that having a location that close to a destination is a bit obsolete, and it almost feels like a park and ride for bikes (although, there's no car parking). I think bike share programs/companies need to be more strategically placed so that they're being used more efficiently instead of just trying to grab a piece of the market of commuters.
I'm still for bike share programs, though. Anything to get people back on a bike and riding again is a good thing. Riding bicycles and the fun you can have on one is infectious.
Austin has had some form of a bike share program since 1997. The Yellow Bike project was the first one. It's still around. It allows people to fix their bikes and even build a complete bike using the tools at the workshop and even the parts. You only have to volunteer back your time to pay it off. The project also had a mission of finding and fixing used bikes and donating them to the needy, such as kids. They also "released" bikes into the "wild" to let anyone and everyone use them free of charge. As you might imagine, the bikes are spray painted yellow from top to bottom to identify them.
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/...g-2118542.html
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A new day for Austin bike sharing
Ben Wear, Getting There
Updated: 7:42 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012
Published: 7:18 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012
Bike sharing in Austin is so 20th century. But, thanks to a $1.5 million federal grant and some furious fundraising, it's about to get a 21st century face-lift.
People who have been around here awhile will remember when the Yellow Bike Project, which was founded in 1997, would periodically "release" a few refurbished bikes into the wild. The nonprofit's utopian concept was that the yellow bikes would be free-to-use, free-range transportation. If you saw one sitting somewhere and you needed to get somewhere else, the idea was that you'd simply hop on and go, then leave the bike there for the next impulse user when you were done.
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