Happy 6th Birthday

Today is the 6th birthday for The Bike-sharing Blog. Time flies as you're pedaling along.

In these past six years, bike-sharing has taken the world by storm. There is no one individual leading the charge, but rather people all over the globe are seeing the value that bike-sharing brings to their city, county, town, or state -- whether it's to lower traffic congestion, improve public health, or increase economic activity around the bike-share stations.

Thanks to the bike-sharing employees who balance bikes from full to empty stations and keep them and the stations functioning. Thanks to the bike transit professionals who manage the services, plan for station locations, partner with friendly neighbors and organizations, and ensure that the services run smoothly. Thanks to the advocates who support bike-sharing in their communities, demand bike-sharing in municipalities where it does not yet exist, and help push the concept to evolve and innovate to better meet the needs of even more people. And thanks to the people who use the service and don't think twice about how bike-sharing has become part of their lives and the urban fabric of their city or town.

There are bike-sharing services on every continent now with millions of people sharing bikes daily. This is a long way from where we started just six years ago. Now tens of thousand of people in New York City and Chicago are anticipating the launch of bike-sharing services this month and next. There have been details of the on-going culture clash between car vs. bike as bike-share stations begin to dot city streets. As other cities around the world have taken to bike-share, so will these too and other cities world-wide as the automobile culture fades and the bicycle culture grows and becomes mainstream. Equity and safety for all.

Thanks for your continued support of The Bike-sharing Blog for these past six years and the next six too.

Sincerely,
Paul DeMaio and Russell Meddin

p.s. - Don't forget to check out The Bike-sharing World Map and our new Twitter feed.

Vélib's 3rd Birthday rolls in with 80 million trips

Three years ago today, the bike-sharing world woke up to a revolution in Paris, France. Although, not the first service in the world, Vélib' was definitely the biggest. It made such a media splash, the entire world started thinking "bike-sharing."

In three years, 80 million trips have been made on these ubiquitous gray bicycles. The system has grown from around 10,000 bikes at 750 stations to 25,000 bikes at 1,800 stations which service all of Paris and its first ring of suburbs. There are 162,000 yearly subscribers to the system, down from a high of 200,000, but subscriber's usage is up over 11% according to Ville Rail & Transport.

There have been growing pains for the system with some maintenance and shrinkage problems. It is no longer the biggest system in the world, that honor goes to the one in Hangzhou, China which has 50,000 bikes. Yet the system is healthy and brings in money to the operator, JCDecaux, and the City of Paris.

The latest statistic show that it is used by everyone from all walks of life: 48% are women and 52% are men, 16% are under the age of 25 and 8% are over the age of 56, and 10% of all users are students. There are rumors of a 30% price increase for the daily and weekly subscriptions this fall, but the price of the yearly subscription is to remain a reasonable €29 ($36.85 US).

Let's celebrate bike-sharing by watching this video on how Vélib' began:

image: AFP/Archives/Philipp Guelland

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

Happy 3rd Birthday!

The Bike-sharing Blog turns 3 today. Happy Birthday to us!

It was just the other day when The Bike-sharing Blog was born, crying and hungry. Its first words were not "mama" and "dada", but rather, "bikebike" and "Copenhagen". Now The Bike-sharing Blog is in toddlerhood and running rampant around the house, getting into everything, and not always picking up after itself. At first there were just a few words in its vocabulary, like Bicing and Velib', but now there are nearly 200 systems all over the globe.

Thanks for reading and your support of The Bike-sharing Blog, making it the #1 website internationally for bike-sharing info -- yes, even more popular and much more accurate than Wikipedia! As the Blog is moving into its 4th year, Russell and I will continue posting news from around the world on what's going on, helping you advocate for bike-sharing in your city through info exchange. Continue to share what is going on in your part of the world, so we could post about it on The Bike-sharing Blog to share with others. As we all learn from the best practices of bike-sharing, so can we make our cities better, healthier, cleaner, and more liveable.

The first three years have been great and the next three should be even more fun.

Happy Birthday!

Sincerely,
Paul DeMaio
MetroBike, LLC
Washington, DC, USA

Russell Meddin
Bike Share Philadelphia
Philadelphia, PA, USA

image credit: pinkcakebox.com