Freedom Cycles – bike sharing in Edmonton

Many cities are moving towards self serve bike rental services to encourage more bike use. I’m not sure how many cities on the West coast are in to this but it seems to be everywhere in Europe.

An interesting one in Paris is Velib’  (in english), roughly translating to “Freedom Cycles”. With preregistration and monthly fee, you pick up a sturdy bike from one of hundereds of locations around the City and as long as you return it to the system in half an hour, there is no charge. Each stations uses smart cards or credit cards to get user information and they are all linked by wifi and so that the bikes are accounted for accross the entire system. The check in/check out system allows for a flexible and reliable network at a very reasonable cost.

I know we had bike share scheme in Edmonton for a few years. As a volunteer run program, part of the idea was to keep the initial investment down by using recycled bikes and limited parking infrastructure, but most of the bikes ended up being broken or stolen and there wasn’t any funding to keep it going.