The Bike-sharing World: First Week of April 2012

Europe:
   
     Slovakia

The City of Bratislava is looking for bids for bike-share. A tender offer is asking for submissions by April 27, 2012. The Bratislava Automated Bike System offer calls for at least an 11-station system as a start. What, you don't read Slovak? Here is an English synopsis and article about the tender. More and more cities in Eastern Europe are realizing the benefits of bike-sharing. A quick look at the Bike-sharing World Map sees the growth of new systems there.


    Poland


OsedomRad is one of the first bike-share systems that offers pick-up and drop-off stations in two counties! This 500-bike, 60-station system operated by neXtbike is based in and around the recreational areas of the Isle of Osedom in northeast Germany, close to the Poland border. A bike checked out from a station in Ahlbeck, Germany can be returned in Świnoujście, Poland and visa-versa! This is just another example of cooperation in the bike-share world that brings us a step closer to inter-operability.


Warsaw Public Bicycle which is scheduled to begin in June 2012 is operating in the Bemowo District of the city. Ten stations are reporting activity on a system map. According to a report in Eltis, it is the first District of many to have a program in the 
Polish capital.





This month NeXtbike Poland is to complement its 140-bike, 17-station Wroclaw City Bike program with a similar system in Pozan. It will open with 80 bikes in 7 stations on April 15th. We will watch as the Warsaw program expands this summer.


    The Netherlands


CallLock in Middelburg, near Belgium and the North Sea, began as a free pilot in November 2010. The system has 40 bikes in 6 stations. This year the system is to become a full fledged subscription payment operation.

                                               

Mo' Incentives to Cycle

Bicycling is good for physical health, environmental health, and the alleviation of traffic congestion, so encouraging bikes use is an essential public priority. Design firm LUNAR Europe, Green City e.V., and the University of Wuppertal, all based in Germany, have partnered to develop mo’, which offers compensation for the use of bicycles and public transportation. mo’ subscribers use their smartcard to rent standard bikes, cargobikes, ebikes, and cars, as well as use public transportation. Subscribers collect mo’ miles by riding bicycles or “eco-friendly transport” and the more mo’ miles one has, the cheaper it is to rent a car.

Users are given a bike tag that tracks the miles ridden on their own bike, while the mo’ card used to access public transportation records the distance travelled on trains or busses. Thus, mo’ provides an array of bikes to be shared in their program, while also rewarding users for using these environmentally responsible methods of transportation. The purpose of this multifaceted approach to encouraging sustainable transportation is to give users every incentive to change their habits over the long term. The driving force of mo’s design team, Dirk Hessenbruch, claims “mo’ points out concrete, feasible alternatives that are based on people’s needs. mo’ means mobility for the city of tomorrow.”

What could be mo' better than that?

Image Credit: Dexigner.com

p.s. - This is The Bike-sharing Blog's 300th post! We can't wait to see what the next 300 mo' posts will be about. 

Germany's Ruhr Valley Rolling with Metroradruhr

This summer brings a new regional bike-sharing system, Metroradruhr, to ten industrial Ruhr valley cities. Starting on June 18th in Dortmund, Germany the system has now reached five of the cities. Bikes are now or soon will be available in Bochum, Bottrop, Dortmund, Duisburg (site of this week's horrific music festival stampede), Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Hamm, Herne, Mülheim an der Ruhr and Oberhausen. This is not just a series of suburban satellite additions to a larger city system, but a single system connecting nearby cities together. The most similar operation is Italy's Bicincittà, but the cities and stations of Metroradruhr are close enough together to allow bikes to move between cities.

Metroraruhr operates using the neXt bike telephone rental system. As with neXt bike, Metroraruhr has the convenience of reserving bikes for large groups in advance. Registration is required to use the system, but there are no subscriptions. The price is €1 per hour ($1.30 US) for any bike or according to which bike is chosen, starting from €5 per 24 hours ($6.50 US).

Linking an area together with a single bike-sharing system has incredible convenience for the users and strengthens a region's public transit options.

As we all know, Bike-sharing in Germany is really Rad-verleihsystem!

image: Der Westen and metroradruhr

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

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