May 15, 2015

Bike sharing is working

Tree Hugger - Eliot Fishman, a researcher formerly at Utrecht University and now at Australia's Institute for Sensible Transport, reviewed the English-language bike share literature and found out what makes bike share systems around the globe popular.

Published earlier this year in Transport Reviews, ... Fishman put together some impressive facts on bike share's growth, including:

• Between 2004 and 2014 bike share BSPs grew from 13 systems to 855, with 54 in the U.S.

• The systems with the most bicycles are in Paris (17,902), London (9,901), the Chinese city of Changsu (5,924), and New York (5,233)

• Currently most bike share systems are “third generation,” which means they take credit card payments, have GPS tracking of bikes, and are accessed by smart phone apps to show bike availability and docking stations.

• Barcelona is the city whose residents takes the most bike share trips per day

In almost all cases studied, bike share reduces vehicle miles traveled by citizens. (The exception is London). On the downside, however, people using bike share are more likely to use it instead of either walking or taking public transport, rather than always replacing a car trip with a bike trip.

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