On Jul 19 2007, Udhay Shankar N wrote:
Yellow-bike and similar programs have met with mixed success in the US. Perhaps what the Paris experiment demonstrates is that it takes a massive show of will (and prioritization of dollars) to create the critical mass we need to revolutionize our transportation system.
it isn't actually such a massive effort to buy 22k bikes and give them to people. other cities (e.g. munich) do that since about 10 years already. additional measures are actually equally easy and cost-effective (e.g. investing in painting bicycle paths on streets, or building them out of parking places, or placing entry stoppers to keep cars out of the city centres). and then there are the 'efforts' that actually bring in cash (such as the congestion charge in london). it has all just to do with really easy political decisions to make cities car free. after all (european) cities were not designed for cars in the first place.
-b
