The France government have set up public bike rental stands in Lyon France. Though this article is not directly about the economy, but its a public choice that France has made, and I personally think its a very good and clever one. One of the users of this public good is quoted as follow in the article:
“Rates are quite low, more or less around 1€ per hour.”
“The first 30 minutes are free - to encourage small commuting and the rotation of the bikes at the numerous stations.”
“Bikes are really heavy but the ride is pretty smooth, they have two drum brakes, 3 internal gear, lights and a small lock.”
Having public bike rentals can solve many of our current problem, First the current energy problem, a bike could be a lot cheaper than driving and the first 30mins in free. One might consider driving into a city because they could drive from spot to spot, but with rental bikes one could just ride the bus to the city and commute with the bike with out worrying about parking, gas etc... There's a lot of positive externalities to this programs also, with more bikes available people will bike more, promoting a healthier life style and possibly save on health care costs for the government. With more people biking as a way of commuting there's less pollution making for cleaner cities. I think this program could be a great idea and see whether our city could follow France's example and start riding and beside who doesn't like riding a bike?
4 comments:
Riding bikes is a very good idea. I guess we wont talk about intercity or interstate transportation (because the cities are so scattered in the U.S. and it'd be crazy to drive from 1 city to another, at least it wont be me >_<). But if we talk about commuting within the city, this is an excellent idea. It offers another kind of public transportation (besides subway and buses...) that people can choose from. I just wonder how many locations do they put the bike rental stands though. In the U.S., we normally see that workers often live in the suburb. They then go to work downtown in the morning and leave in the afternoon. If those people choose to ride bikes, wouldnt it mean there will be certain time of the day where one location will have too many bikes and the other location will have none? (during the day, a lot of bikes would be parked inside the city, vice versa) Or in the French model they require the public to return bikes to its original location? hehe, for me, i like riding bicycles, but not in the winter, or while i was wearing a dress/skirt ;)
Well the bike station are located around the city and the first 30 mins are free so you do not have to return the bikes to its original station, just to another station, to get your deposits back.
Public bike rentals seems to be the new up and coming thing. I have heard of some cities in the US looking into or already implementing similar programs. These programs are also being seen on college campuses. OWU is currently seeking funding or working out details to have rentals on campus in the near future.
Wow, this is exactly what I was thinking about everytime I walked around the campus looking at all the bicycles that are not being used! I think it's really cool that the French Government actually carried this out.
Is OWU seriously seeking for ways to work this out? I haven't heard of that before. Do you know what department is responsible for this? I would love to know when I could use this bicycle.
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