2009 Wrap-up

2009 has been another stupendous year for bike-sharing! An unscientific count of the bike-sharing services listed on The Bike-sharing World Map, plus a few more from Spain where bike-sharing services seem to sprout like dandelions, puts the number at about 160 globally. This is up from 92 at the end of last year for an increase of 74% in the number of services worldwide. There are so many services out there now as compared to just two years ago that it has actually made it difficult to keep up with everything that is going on. This is a good thing. Go humans!

The planet and its people are ready for bike-sharing now more than ever before. With the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference earlier this month, international support at the highest levels of government was shown for improving how we treat the planet... however we have a long way to go.

Conference-goers and activists were representing their home countries in the city that brought the bike-sharing movement into the modern era with Copenhagen’s forward-thinking Bycyklen or “City Bike” service in 1995. If each conference attendee were to take the idea back with them to their home countries and cities, bike-sharing’s reach and its positive impacts would be even more powerful. Incrementally, countries could block the greenhouse gases being created by the encroachment of polluting modes of transportation on sustainable modes like walking and cycling, while making cities healthier and better places to live. Utopian? You betcha! If we have a key which is part of the overall solution, we should use it.

As we enter a new decade, The Bike-sharing Blog will be there to follow trends in this nascent industry. Thank you for continuing to make The Bike-sharing Blog the world’s #1 source of information on bike-sharing, public bikes, bicicletas públicas, fahrradverleih, or whatever it may be known as in your part of the world.

Wishing you a happy and healthy 2010.

Best,
Paul DeMaio
MetroBike, LLC