Greater City Providence

Bike-Sharing in Texas

bike share in Barcelona

Bike Share Rack in Barcelona by Matthew Coolidge

When I heard on the radio that Austin, Texas was introducing a bike-share program I got all excited and immediately thought of Barcelona, where people actively use a great bike-share program.

Listening a little more carefully, however, the story is that the city is introducing the program for city employees.
At first, I was a little disappointed, but thinking about it a little more, simply getting city officials to bike between departments probably makes a lot of sense. It’s not a bad start…

I’ll be interested in seeing if it catches on. In a city the size of ours, I think we might be able to get away with Razor Scooters.

[more info]

Matthew Coolidge

Matthew Coolidge is co-founder of Greater City Providence. In addition to the occasional blog post about cycling, sailing, or urban rant, he works as an Electrical Engineer, often traveling to major cities and ports around the globe, or simply Warwick.

10 comments

  • Razor scooters would work great here if the sidewalks weren’t all beat up and cracked and uneven.

    My mother, while at jury duty in New Haven, saw a lawyer-suit-type come flying down the sidewalk on a razor scooter, hit a crack, and took a nasty tumble, papers flying everywhere.

    Our city and state employees should be using their feet. It’s small enough. They should be riding in on the bus.

  • I think it’s a decent idea introducing something like that to city workers as a test group. Work the kinks out with small crowd then make it public. It’s good initial advertising, too, if they actually use it.

  • I believe the students who are running the bike share program at RISD are looking to expand it, or have expanded it recently.

  • I think that city employees generally do walk between city hall and other downtown city offices (400 Westminster, and the School Department and the Building Dept) but I don’t think it is realistic for them to walk to Allens Avenue to DPW or RWPark. And I’m not sure that those are very bikeable either.

  • The Mayor announced in his “Greenprint” report that he would be looking into developing a bike share program for Providence. And we will soon have a good example to look to in Boston. They recently released a very comprehensive RFP for 3rd generation bike share that should be operational by June 2010. It will be interesting to see how well that works and whether a similar program could be brought to PVD.

  • Oh, Yay! That’s fantastic! I’ll be down there next month. I’ll have to check it out. Thanks for the link data_geek!

  • The students have a bike rack set up on the RISD Beach for the Pink Bikes. Where they get locked to once they’ve been borrowed is another question though.

Providence, RI
52°
Rain
6:33 am7:07 pm EDT
Feels like: 52°F
Wind: 2mph N
Humidity: 94%
Pressure: 29.89"Hg
UV index: 1
FriSatSun
52°F / 36°F
55°F / 39°F
55°F / 34°F