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.

Cycling on the Rise

A multi-year cycling promotion project involving six European cities recently ended, with one conclusion being that cycling has suddenly become a hot topic. The project began before the Velib bike sharing project got underway, inspiring cities the world over to consider the bicycle as a vehicle for public transportation. By the time the project concluded, a confluence of rising petrol prices, economic crisis and Paris's inspiring example had made bike sharing a tempting option for mayors the world over, including here in Budapest.

The project, called Spicycles, included a component on bike-sharing, and monitored the implementation of such systems (or expansion of existing ones) in all its partner cities: Berlin; Bucharest and Ploiesti Romania; Gothenborg, Sweden; Rome and Barcelona. The system in the last city became one of the biggest in Europe, and was almost solely responsible for igniting what's now a thriving transport-cycling culture.

I had the privilege of working on the project's final publication as an editor and graphic designer. It describes the project's results, including lessons from Barcelona's Bicing system and things that Gothenborg and Berlin have done to become two of Europe's leading lights in utility cycling.

Bike Sharing: a Boon or Bust?

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Over the last year or two, there has been a lot of hubbub about bike sharing due mainly to the massive system launched in 2007 in Paris, Velib. Now bike sharing is sweeping across Central and Eastern Europe, with systems already launched in Krakow, Bucharest, Ploieste (Romania) and Prague and plans or studies underway in Warsaw, Wroclaw and right here in Budapest.

I guess you have to be suspicious of anything that gets fashionable, as fashions fade. Bike sharing has always been a difficult proposition due to theft and vandalism, and although smart-card technology has mediated the problem, it's not a cure-all, as experience in Paris demonstrates.

In this region, as I argued in a recent article, we might be jumping into bike-sharing prematurely. In some cities, there's a basic need for safe places to ride, and if that isn't sorted out first, bike sharing could be a non-starter.

During a December visit to Bucharest, I learned that this is a concern for the Cicloteque sytem launched just last summer. With just 50 km of paths and an otherwise hostile environment for cyclists, Bucharest saw little use of the system during its first few months. Interest at the university-based service picked up somewhat when students returned to class in the fall, but it fell off drastically as soon as the weather turned cold. Cicloteque's been shuttered for winter as organisers seek a replacement for the original corporate sponsor, Unicredit Bank.

I won't say that bike sharing can never serve as a starting point, though. In Barcelona, for instance, the huge Bicing scheme launched in 2007 seems to have singlehandedly created a lively urban cycling culture where one hadn't existed.

I believe Budapest is a rare city in this region that is actually ripe for it (and any other cycling promotion measures). By now, there are scores of examples to examine around the world (see map), and Budapest will have to take care to find the most successful approaches in comparable contexts.