November 2007 World Map of Bike-sharing

Without further ado, I'd like to present a world map of bike-sharing programs. I have tallied a total of 62 2nd and 3rd generation bike-sharing programs worldwide. Per earlier research I'm defining 2nd generation programs as low-tech unattended coin-deposit release systems and 3rd generation as high-tech unattended smartcard or mobile phone release systems.

This provides a continent scorecard of:

Europe: 61
Asia: 1
North America: 0
South America: 0
Australia: 0
Africa: 0
Antartica: 0 (it's a continent too and will likely need bike-sharing due to global warming)

As you can see, Europe is slightly in the lead, but Asia is not far behind. The list of these programs you will find on the right column of this blog.


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This year has seen the greatest expansion of bike-sharing programs than any other year. With systems like Barcelona's Bicing and the behemoth, Paris' Velib', bike-sharing is reaching a wider audience than ever before.