Happy 10th Anniversary, MetroBike!

MetroBike is pleased to be celebrating our 10^th anniversary this month.

After many years of publishing academic articles on bike-sharing while working on my master’s degree with the hope of someone else bringing bike-share to the shores of the U.S., I became impatient with the wait and knew I had to be the change I wished to see. So in November 2005, I left the safety of a municipal job with benefits to found MetroBike in order to foster bike-sharing’s introduction. MetroBike was the U.S.’s first bike-share consultancy. My parents thought I was crazy. Looking back, I guess I was.

With MetroBike I’ve had the opportunity to assist in founding Capital Bikeshare in the Washington, D.C. region where we serve in a managerial and planning role for two of the system’s municipal owners, having sited 132 of the service’s stations. I’ve enjoyed returning to Copenhagen – the city where I first learned about bike-sharing in 1995 – to help the region modernize the former coin-operated system that helped the world see what bike-share could be on a large-scale. There have been many other non-profit, for-profit, academic, and local and federal government clients over the years. Also, I’ve doubled the size of MetroBike from one to two people – a 100% increase!

While MetroBike isn’t a Fortune 500 company, it’s nice that a small business can help change the world. Thank you to MetroBike’s past and present clients and the folks who have believed in me to bring this crazy little idea of bike-share into their pocket of the world. Thanks also to the readers of The Bike-sharing Blog and The Bike-sharing World Map. It’s wonderful to be able to do something that I love in making bikes available to all for a cleaner and healthier planet. We’re looking forward to the next 10 successful years.

Sincerely,

Paul DeMaio

Founder and Principal

MetroBike, LLC

Washington, D.C., USA