With at least 125 3rd generation bike-sharing programs around the world, we have accumulated much experience and data about bike-sharing and its impacts on cities and towns. Now wouldn’t it be great to have this data at your fingertips? Look no more, thanks to a project called “Optimizing Bike Sharing in European Cities” or OBIS of the Intelligent Energy - Europe program of the European Union.
According to their website, “OBIS will promote and disseminate the project results to a wide audience, with the aim of raising awareness of the opportunities offered by bike-sharing, as an innovative individual system of public transport.”
“The OBIS Project will result in publication of a manual presenting good practices, success factors and market potential. This will help interested parties to implement efficient bike-sharing schemes, to identify needs and options and prepare appropriate implementation strategies.”
Looking through the data sets of bike-sharing programs in nine European countries - from Sweden to Italy and Spain to Poland, I’m pressed with all the data the project has collected so far. This data includes everything from administrative aspects of running a program and customer pricing to financing and results. While the spreadsheets are being provided presently, they are works in progress with OBIS continuing to fill out the expansive data sets for each of the countries. Already the data is invaluable in better understanding the positive impact bike-sharing has had on European communities and likely would have on communities around the world.
image credit: OBIS
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