Transportation

Bike Sharing Gone Wild

- Adam Clare 3 Comments

Pedal power is gaining popularity in Europ in the form of more and more cities creating their own bike sharing programs.

For mayors looking to ease congestion and prove their environmental bona fides, bike-sharing has provided a simple solution: For the price of a bus, they get a fleet of bicycles, and they can avoid years of construction and the approvals required for a subway. For riders, joining means cut-rate transportation – as well as a chance to contribute to the planet’s well-being.

The new systems are successful in part because they blanket cities with huge numbers of available bikes, but the real linchpin is technology. Aided by electronic smart cards and computerized bike stands, riders can pick up and drop off bicycles in seconds at hundreds of locations, their payments deducted from bank accounts.

“As some cities have done it, others are realizing they can do it, too,” said Paul DeMaio, founder of MetroBike, a U.S.-based bike-sharing consultant that tracks programs worldwide. “There is an incredible trajectory.”

The huge new European bicycle-sharing networks function less as recreation and more as low-cost, alternative public transportation. Most programs (though not Paris’s and Lyon’s) exclude tourists and day-trippers.

700 KM on 4 Liters of Fuel?

- Adam Clare

Yes it is possible, FactCheck.org says so:
Can a freight train really move a ton of freight 436 miles on a gallon of fuel?

Yes.

Some rail lines do better. The Soo Line, which is the U.S. branch of the Canadian Pacific, operating in the upper Midwest, reported moving each ton of freight 517.8 miles per gallon of diesel fuel, on average. Lines operated by the Grand Trunk Corp. reported 510.5 ton-miles per gallon.

The national average figure of 436 miles is the highest on record, according to AAR, and a 3.1 percent increase from the 423-mile figure reached in 2006.

The rail industry says its fuel efficiency has increased by 85 percent since 1980. It attributes that to factors that include using new and more efficient locomotives, training engineers to conserve fuel, using computers to assemble trains more efficiently in the yard and to plan trips more efficiently to avoid congestion, and reducing the amount of time engines are idling.

Bicycle Production Vs. Car Production Since 1950

- Adam Clare 5 Comments

From The Economist:

Montreal Launches Bixi the Pedal Powered Public Transit

- Adam Clare 2 Comments


Bixi is the name of Montreal’s new bike-sharing program. If I had my way every city in the world would have a system like this. Way to go Montreal!

The city joins Paris, Barcelona, and Lyon with the installation of its own public bike system, named Bixi, making 2,400 bicycles available to the public at more than 300 locations across six Montreal boroughs.

Starting next spring, residents will be able to borrow bicycles from one station and drop them off at another.

“You grab it, you ride it, you bring it back,” Montreal’s mayor Gerald Tremblay told The Canadian Press. “It will become an emblem for Montreal.”

Bixi may be a more health-friendly means of transportation, but it’s also environmentally friendly. The bikes, which were made in Quebec, are composed entirely of recycled aluminum and the parking stations run on solar power.

The entire operation cost $15 million and was paid for by Stationnement de Montreal, a company that manages the city’s on-street parking.

Stolen Bikes May go to Poor

- Adam Clare

Recently in Toronto over 2,000 stolen bikes were found, which is good news itself. Now, after the public has been given a chance to reclaim their bikes, community groups are championing the idea that the stolen bikes should be give to the poor. The bikes that have been stripped for their parts should be given to local non-profit bike organizations to help them run their bicycling operations.

Heaps said the city can’t get directly involved, but it has encouraged interested outside groups to raise the matter with Toronto police, who seized the bikes after arresting bike shop owner Igor Kenk and laying a series of charges related to bike theft and drugs.

“There are many people out there who cannot afford a bicycle,” Heaps said. “They probably would benefit from a second-hand bike that was safe and sound.”

One interested group is the Community Bicycle Network, but a project of that size would likely need a number of groups to get together, said its spokesperson Sherri Byer.

“Everybody would like to see (the bikes) go back into the community in some kind of goodwill manner,” Byer said in an interview yesterday.

“They could go back to community organizations and go to people on low income who need bikes. It would be nice to see something good done with them.”

Toronto police have been getting “continual requests and suggestions on just how to deal with these bikes,” said spokesperson Const. Wendy Drummond.

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