Tak (thanks) goes to my friends in the Cities of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg for a sneak peak at their upcoming bike-sharing service, Cykel DK. This new uber high-tech service is to launch this fall in Copenhagen and Frederiksberg, Denmark and will have some unique features such as an Android tablet with built-in GPS, real-time train departures and ticket integration, and real-time info on available bikes and docks in the area. Unfortunately, real-time Tour de France footage won't be available with this version of the software. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this on version 2.0.
There will be 1,260 bikes at 65 stations and the service, of course, will be available 24 hours per day, 365 days per
year. Customers will use the tablet to enter their credit card info to unlock the bike. Tourists and other casual customers will pay 20 DKK (about 3.50 USD) per hour. Frequent customers can purchase a membership for 50 DKK (about 8.85 USD) per month.
Cykel DK is a non-profit that will be operated by the cities of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg plus DSB -- Denmark's national railway system. For the Blog's U.S. readers, can you imagine Amtrak getting into the bike-share business?! It makes so much sense as an extension of their existing inter-city mobility provision. And Amtrak wouldn't even be the second or third national railway to do this: Deutsche Bahn in Germany, Dutch Railways in The Netherlands, and SNCB in Belgium already do this, plus I'm sure a handful of others.
I'm not sure if I've seen a bike-share technology that will truly take us into the 4th generation of bike-share, but from what I've read so far, it's looking like this could be it.
Here's their video with more info.
More information about Cykel DK is at http://www.byogpendlercyklen.dk and gobike is at http://gobike.com.
Image credits: Ursula Bach and gobike
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