But this latest French utopia has met a prosaic reality: Many of the specially designed bikes, which cost $3,500 each, are showing up on black markets in Eastern Europe and northern Africa. Many others are being spirited away for urban joy rides, then ditched by roadsides, their wheels bent and tires stripped. With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program’s organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche.
Saturday 31 October 2009
French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality - NYTimes.com
Tuesday 27 October 2009
new map with clustering
Monday 26 October 2009
Monday 19 October 2009
Mapa de los 75 ‘bicing’ de España | ecomovilidad.net · Transporte público y movilidad urbana sostenible
Aunque en Madrid nos acaban de anunciar nuestro sistema público de alquiler de bicis, no es ni mucho menos una idea pionera. Hasta 75 ciudades de nuestro país cuentan con estos sistemas en sus calles desde hace años, tanto grandes capitales como pequeñas poblaciones que unidas en mancomunidad se organizan para llevarlos a cabo.
Wednesday 14 October 2009
bicing fail
I haven't had this for a while, but today it happened again.
I tried to use a bicycle in the morning (station #27), but the bike was broken so I placed it back into the anchor. Then the station started blinking yellow and blocked the bike. There was no functional bike left, so the station said so. When I hold my card against the reader I was told that I already had a bike.
When I arrived at work by foot I contacted bicing, I also send them photos of the bicycle and station. Even though I did so they still charged me 10.50 Euro for 4h 5m. Thank god it isn't that much, but I can understand how people are angry if it happens often.
In the end it was not my fault, but the cause of a broken bicycle and a station not working correctly. The other problem was the slow reaction time, I contacted them in the first two hours, not after four.
Maybe they should raise the yearly fee instead of introducing these hidden costs.