The Bike-sharing Wheels Turn as Whirling Dervishes

As bike-sharing spins around the world like Whirling Dervishes it has landed in the home city of the Sufi dancers. Mayor Tahir Akyürek of Konya, Turkey where the Mevlavi movement famous for the dancers began, unveiled his city’s plan to be the first with a bike-share system in Turkey. In the first phase, the city with a population of 1.4 million will start with 40 stations with 500 bikes along the tram and main bus lines to reduce the need to drive automobiles to public transportation stations. Mayor Akyürek in an Anatolia News Agency article noted that bicycles were more widely used in Konya than any other Turkish province and so it followed naturally for bicycles to be introduced into the public transportation grid there. A tender for the "smart bicycle" project has already been completed, and the project will go into operation in one year.

by Russell Meddin, Bike Share Philadelphia

Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=163856

Photo source: Wikipedia