Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but… wandering around Barcelona, I noticed these rows of red bikes in self-locking racks. It turns out this is an enterprise called Bicing, basically Zipcar-for-bikes. You pay about $45 a year to be a member and you get a card. When you need a bike, you walk down to one of these racks, sprinkled liberally through the city, wave your card and grab a bike. You pay about 50 cents a half hour to have the bike for up to two hours. When you get where you’re going, you find another a rack, lock the bike up, and leave it.
This is really cool! Similar services are popular in Lyon, Paris, and Stockholm. Why not New York? Why not your home town here? Write your local municipal representatives and demand 1/10,000th of a bike!
[UPDATE] A pilot program launched in Washington, DC.
Procrastiblog 