Imagine walking to a sidewalk corner and finding

a public bicycle. With a cellphone call or swipe

of a card, you unlock it from its bike rack and
ride it across town. Once at your destination, you
steer to the closest bike rack and, with one more
call or card swipe, return the bike to the public
network. You pay less than $.50 for the trip, and
the bike is once again available for the taking.
Bike-sharing already exists in cities across
Europe, revolutionizing transportation networks
and greening the urban fabric. We highlighted
eight cities with successful programs:
paris
Name: Velib’
Launched: July, 2007
Bicycles: 10,000
Stations: 750
City population: 2.15 million
Number of citizens per bike: 215
Availability: Year-round
Price structure: Riders can select a one-
day card for €1, a weekly card for €5 or an annual
card for €29. First half-hour is free. Additional
half-hours are priced at €1, €2 and €4.
Technology: Smartcard
Operating company: JC Decaux
By far the largest bike-share program to-date,
Paris plans to have installed over 10,000 bikes by
July, 2007, and 20,000 by 2008. Mayor Bertrand
Delanoe launched the Velib’ network as part of his
wide-reaching program to green Paris and reduce
vehicular traffic in the central city. To help riders
navigate the streets, maps and safety manuals in
several languages will be available at every station.
barcelona
Name: Bicing
Launched: March, 2007
Bicycles: 1,500
Stations: 100
City population: 1.5 million
Number of citizens per bike: 1,000
Availability: Year-round, 5am to midnight,
24 hours a day on Friday and Saturday.
Price structure: Riders must apply via
mail for a swipe card and purchase an annual
subscription for €24. First half-hour is free.
Additional half-hours are priced at €.30, with
a maximum rental time of two hours.
Technology: Smartcard, and optional credit card.
Operating company: Clear Channel Adshel
Like many bike-share programs, Bicing offers
its users a Google mash-up, with the number of
available bikes at every station updated in real-time.
Barcelona is currently in the process of expanding
its program to 3,000 bikes by the end of 2007. As of
today, Bicing had attracted 62,000 registered users.
copenhagen
Name: Bycyklen
Launched: 1995
Bicycles: 2,000
Stations: 110
City population: 600,000
Number of citizens per bike: 400
Availability: April to November
Price structure: Riders deposit a 20 kroner
coin into the bike handlebar to unlock it from the bike
rack. Bikes may be rented for unlimited amounts of
time, although they may not leave the designated
boundary of the old city. The 20 kroner coin is
returned when the bike is locked back into the rack.
Technology: Coin deposit
Operating company: City Bike
Foundation of Copenhagen
Bycyklen bikes were designed to be simple (they are
single-speed), durable and adjustable. They are also
conspicuous. In fact, the program is supported in
part by advertising placed on each of the bike wheels.
Copenhagen has announced the goal of increasing
to 5,000 bikes and enlarging the dedicated area.
frankfurt
Name: Call a Bike
Launched: 2003
Bicycles: 720
Stations: 66
City population: 650,000
Number of citizens per bike: 900
Price structure: 8 cents per minute, with
a maximum of €15 per day, and €60 per week.
Technology: Mobile phone
Operating company: Deutsche Bahn
Call a Bike is run in several German cities, including
frankfurt, through a system of authentication
codes that automatically locks and unlocks bikes.
Residents can approach any Call-a-Bike bicycle at
any major intersection within the city. If the green
light is blinking on the lock, the bicycle is available.
After registering oneself over the phone, the user
calls the number displayed on the lock and is given
a key code. Bikes can be returned to the network
by locking to any fixed structure (except a traffic
signal) and entering a new code into the lock.
lyon
Name: Velo’v
Launched: 2005
Bicycles: 3,000
Stations: 350
City population: 450,000
Number of citizens per bike: 150
Availability: Year-round
Price structure: Rider must purchase
either a long-term or short-term subscription
card. First half-hour is free. Pricing then
varies for each additional hour.
Technology: Smartcard
Operating company: JC Decaux
Three months after Velo’v launched, 15,000
users were taking 4,000 trips a day. Today, daily
ridership reaches 30,000. Lyon intends to
expand its fleet by an additional 1,000 bikes by
the end of 2007, with the goal of having stations
within 300 meters of every point in the city. JC
Decaux absorbed all set-up and operating costs in
exchange for a bus-shelter advertising contract.
oslo
Name: Citybike
Launched: 2003
Bicycles: 1,200
Stations: 100
City population: 475,000
Number of citizens per bike: 400
Availability: Year-round, 6 am to midnight
Price structure: Yearly subscription
card, which is available for 70 kroner/year
Technology: Smartcard
Operating company: Clear Channel Adshel
Clear Channel Adshel has installed Citybikes
in four Norwegian cities: Trondheim, Drammen,
Bergen and Oslo. Citybike is fully funded
by Clear Channel Adshel in exchange for
street-furniture advertising contracts.
pamplona
Name: Nbici
Launched: July, 2007
Bicycles: 350
Stations: 20
City population: 200,000
Number of citizens per bike: 570
Availability: Year-round, 8am to
6pm (extended summer hours)
Price structure: First half-hour is free.
Each additional half-hour costs €.50.
Technology: Smartcard
Operating company: Cemusa
Nbici is the newest addition to Europe’s bike-
share network, having launched in early July. It
is also Cemusa’s first foray into bike-sharing.
Like most European bike-share programs,
nbici is funded through an advertising contract.
The City of Pamplona offered Cemusa
control over 50 advertising panels, 40 clocks,
50 advertising fences and 29 posters in
exchange for funding nbici in its entirety.
stockholm
Name: Storstockholms Lokaltrafik (SL)
Launched: 2006
Bicycles: 1,000
Stations: 80
City population: 800,000
Number of citizens per bike: 80
Availability: April-November, 6 am to
6 pm (last bike can be taken at 5:59)
Price structure: Daily passes cost 25 kroner
($4.50), and season passes cost 200 kroner ($36).
There is no fee to check out a bike, but penalties are
imposed after a maximum rental time of three hours.
Technology: Smartcard
Operating company: Clear Channel Adshel
In 2006 Stockholm launched a congestion
pricing program to charge motorists to enter the city
center. It has since been recognized as one of the
world’s most successful, and Sweden’s parliament
voted in June, 2007, to make the charge permanent.
Stockholm’s bike-share program has been lauded as
a complimentary effort to attract those who might
otherwise travel inside the city center by car.
Could bike-sharing work in New York?
The Forum for Urban Design and Storefront for
Art and Architecture decided to launch our own
small experiment, offering 20 bicycles for free 30-
minute rentals from 97 Kenmare and a satellite
location. With an average of about two dozen riders
per day, we assembled the following reactions:

Many of the visitors to the New York Bike-Share

Project do not currently own bicycles. They
overwhelmingly said they would participate in a
bike-share program if they didn’t have to worry
about storing a bike in their apartment, or worrying
about theft.
What are the best reasons for launching
a bike-share program in New York?

Bike-sharing is the greenest form of urban

transportation second to walking.

New York’s mass transit is over capacity, and capital

improvements to our buses and subways can take
billions of dollars and decades to implement.

New York’s waterfront is widely

inaccessible by current mass transit.

Many of New York’s neighborhoods are not

well-connected by current mass transit.
For a bike-share program to be successful,
democratic and helpful in New York, it must adhere
to the following non-negotiable principles:
The first half-hour must be free.
Bike-sharing is democratic transportation.
In Lyon, 90% of trips clock in at less than 30
minutes—that is, at no cost to the user. New
Yorkers may enjoy using the system for longer
trips at some cost, but the pricing structure
must ensure that short trips are free.
There must be a sufficient density
of bikes and stations.
For a bike-share system to work, New Yorkers must
be aware of the program, be reasonably certain
that a bike will be available, and be confident that
they can return their bike to a convenient location.
A good rule of thumb: bike stations should be on
each avenue, and on every four streets. While a
modest bike-share program might be an appealing
first step, it must be highly dense in whatever its
geographic area. A bold, dense program will be
more visible, dependable and user-friendly.
A bike-share program must be independent
and flexible.
Bike-sharing will be a component of New York’s mass
transit network, but it must be independent of the
MTA. This will allow the program the opportunity to
launch quickly, adjust efficiently and remove itself
from the politics of unwieldy city/state bureaucracies.
Users must be able to render a
bike immediately.
A New York bike-share must be accessible
to tourists as well as residents. Therefore,
users must have the option of rendering a
bike through a swipe of a credit-card.
To imagine a bike-share program in New York,
consider the following locations:
Williamsburg/Greenpoint
A neighborhood exploding in population and
underserved by mass transit.

pop: 160,338 residents

( according to 2000 Census data )
size: 4.9 square miles
Use: short trips, recreation
Proposal: 350 bikes at 20 stations
Hudson River Park
A linear park that spans most of Manhattan’s
west side.

Use: short trips, commuting, recreation

Proposal: 350 bikes at 20 stations
South of 14th Street
A collection of neighborhoods with difficult east-west
connections.

Use: short trips, commuting, recreation, tourism

Proposal: 1,000 bicycles at 50 stations
Manhattan below 86th Street
A high-density urban area clogged by automobile
traffic and and suffering from an over-capacity mass
transit system.

Use: short trips, commuting, recreation, tourism

Proposal: 10,000 bicycles at 750 stations
New York City—All Five Boroughs
The largest bike-share network in the world.

Use: short trips, commuting, recreation, tourism

Proposal: 40,000 bicycles at 3,000 stations
Skeptical New Yorkers have approached us with
a number of legitimate questions and significant
concerns as to whether a bike-share program could
launch in this city.
How would it be financed?
Bike-shares can be paid for through municipal funds,
advertising revenue and user fees. New York City
would have to determine the ideal ratio. For any bike-
share program to be successful, user fees must
be nominal, and the first half-hour must be free.

New York already has an outdoor-furniture

contract with Cemusa. It could either solicit new
bids for a large bike-share program, or fit a small
program into its current Cemusa contract.
Europeans may embrace biking, but
isn’t New York car-centric city?
It may be currently a car-centric city, but that doesn’t
need to stay that way. New York’s Department of
Transportation is introducing more dedicated bike
lanes as we speak. Building more bike lanes is not
technologically difficult, it simply requires a shift
in priorities. And by the way, New York already has
a strong history of transportation going beyond
cars. The MTA runs one of the largest urban
mass-transit systems in the world—subways and
buses have a ridership of 2.2 billion annually.
What about theft and vandalism?
Today’s generation of bike-shares are extremely
difficult to steal. Bike stations are monitored by
GPS systems. Subscription cards track each user’s
activity and can connect to each user’s credit cards
or bank accounts. When locked into the bike station,
bikes are virtually impossible to disconnect.

Every successful bike-share program includes a

maintenance component, and New York would have
to insist on one here. The company that installs
and maintains our system would be responsible
for fixing and /or replacing broken bikes.
New York’s streets are
precious commodities. Where
would the bike racks fit?
It would be difficult, but not impossible, to find
sidewalk locations for bike rack installation. Other
alternatives include installing locations on parkland
or city-owned property, or replacing spots for two
parallel-parked cars with a rack for 20 bikes.
What about helmets and liability?
New York does not legally require the use of bike
helmets. Should the law change, or should the city
decide that a bike-share program should require
helmets, either the program would offer them,
or the users would need to supply their own.

Before the city engages a private company to provide

a bike-share program, questions of liability will need
to be addressed. New York should look to other
American cities—especially Chicago, San Francisco
and Washington, D.C.—to explore legal models.
Over the course of the five-day project, we have
found that a bike-share project would fit neatly
within many of the city’s current initiatives.
NYC 2030
Regardless of the outcome of the congestion
pricing plan, the Mayor has found wide agreement
that Manhattan’s traffic levels are crippling and
unsustainable. Should congestion pricing succeed, a
bike-share program would provide a complimentary
carrot to those persuaded to leave their cars at home.
Should it fail, perhaps New York should look not to
London but to Paris for inspiration in greening its city.
2nd Avenue Subway
At best, the 2nd Avenue Subway will be completed
in 2020 and cost billions of dollars. Its ability
to provide Manhattan’s east side with adequate
public transit will be worth the investment but a
bike-share program would provide an immediate
transit alternative at a small fraction of the cost.
Governors Island
Last month, the Governors Island Preservation and
Education Corporation announced five landscape
architects as finalists to help the city transform the
island into “the park at the center of the world.” One
proposal—by West 8, Rogers Marvel Architects and
Diller Scofidio + Renfro—embraced bike-sharing.
All could easily adopt it. Indeed, a bike-share
program could launch as early as next summer.
East River Waterfront
New York’s city planning office and parks department
have prioritized residential development and
public open space on both sides of the East
River waterfront. None of these new parks and
residential buildings are well-served by public transit.
Connecting New Yorkers to their waterfront will
require a flexible, additional transit alternative.