EU Funds Sought for Bike Sharing

The city administration has officially applied for EU subsidies for a planned bike-sharing system along the lines of Paris's Velib (which uses Hungarian-made bicycles -- pictured) and Barcelona's Bicing systems.

According to the post in Caboodle.hu, the system will include 1,009 bicycles parked at 73 automated racks and cover a seven-square-kilometre section of downtown. Users would be able to ride the public bikes free of charge for the first half hour, and then have to pay the price of a BKV ticket for the second half hour.

According to the earlier decision by the City Council, the system would at first be confined to the central districts of Pest, and gradually expand outward and across the Danube to Buda. The system would not debut before 2011.

Biking to Bucharest

From Cycling Solution

Interested in learning about how different European cities approach cycling development? There's a conference December 18-19 in Bucharest that will be attended by 40-50 cycling professionals and activists from cities from around the continent. They will talk shop and, providing the city's not too buried in snow, have a look around to see what the host city has done in this area. (Pictured is the fleet from Bucharest's new bike-sharing scheme, Cicloteque, launched this summer.)

Registration is free. You just have get there and find accomodation. I actually know a local Budapest activist who told me he would bike there even though it might be "a little cold." In December? In Bucharest? I think there's a good chance it will and can't say I'm quite hardcore enough to join him on the ride.

I will be there for the conference, however. I'm scheduled to give the final talk of the programme, at 5 p.m. December 19. My talk's supposed to give an overview of urban transport cycling in Central and Eastern Europe. If anyone has any info that might supplement such a talk, please add a comment to this post or write me directly at gspencer@rec.org. I'm interested in any advances that regional cities have made in the field.

By the way, the conference's specific focus will be final results from a two-year EU project called Spicycles. Participating cities, along with Bucharest, were Rome; Berlin; Barcelona; Gothenburg (Sweden) and Ploiesti (Romania). Budapest was not included, but I plan on talking at least a little about it, anyway.