Child-friendly Bike-sharing in Fukutsu

Electric-assist bicycles with child seats recently appeared in a bike-sharing system in Japan as part of the Fukutsu Community Cycle. On September 4, Fukutsu City, in the Fukuoka Prefecture of Japan, launched a one-year bike-share pilot project which will run until August 31, 2012.

The city is managing the project and electric-assisted bicycles were developed by Panasonic and the non-profit Town Mobile Network Kitakyushu, who are also operating the electric-assisted bike-sharing service in Kitakyushu City, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan (as detailed in The Bike-sharing Blog earlier this year).

The Fukutsu service consists of 30 electric-assisted bikes, four of which have child seats. Users sign up for the service online or at any manned stations. The bikes cost 200 Yen (US $2.60) per day.


Post and photos by Hiroki Nakamura

Japanese Bike-share is Electric

Kitakyushu City, in the Fukuoka Prefecture of Japan has launched “City Bike”, an electric bike-sharing program. In order to earn its title of environmental capital, the city contracted the non-profit Town Mobile Network Kitakyushu to operate the bike-share service. Since March 27, 2010, 116 bikes have been available at 10 stations throughout the city’s downtown area. July 2010 saw an average of 41 people ride a city bike each day.

Users sign up for the program online or at one of three manned stations where they receive a membership card. With their card, a customer can release a key and battery from one of the many electronic stations throughout the city. The customer may can then unlock the bike with the key and insert the battery into the bike, at which point they are ready to ride. The bikes cost 105 Yen (US $1.27) per hour, with additional fees for keeping a bike for over 5 hours.

Source: Japan for Sustainability

image credit: Kitakyushu City

First Japanese Bike-sharing is JCDecaux Cyclocity

Japan's first big bike-sharing system is to be a JCDecaux Cyclocity system like the Vélib' in Paris. Toyama, Japan just signed an agreement for a small 150 bike and 15 station system according to BusinessWire. The system is to start March 2010. This will be JCDecaux's second bike-sharing system outside of Europe, the other is Brisbane, Australia. We all have been waiting for Japan to start pedaling with the rest of the bike-sharing world.

Update: CyclOcity Toyama started March 20, 2010.

image: Toyama Tourist Board

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