The Philly BikeShare initiative launches

I wrote the text of “Philly Eco-City” in July of 2007, that is before the election of Mayor Michael Nutter.

Last week I discovered that on Thursday January 17th a bunch of people from the Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia launched an initiative to create Philly BikeShare or rather “Bike Share Philadelphia” as they call it. The launch event took place at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences on a cold winter night. The event attracted about 400 people with, among others, Michael Nutter, the new Philadelphia Mayor, and a state representative in attendance.

I am very happy that other people had the same idea and are working on making it happen.
Launching a bike sharing program in a large US city is a major endeavor. I think that the more people and the more energy is focused on Philly BikeShare, the more likely such project is to succeed. The fun and the difficulty is in the implementation.

For me Philly BikeShare is an obvious concept. Lyon where this program was first successfully implemented has the same general topography as Philadelphia.
That is: a valley crossed by one or two large rivers and steep hills.

Skeptics put forward that such concept is successful in France because “bicycling is part of the French culture”.

In my opinion, the success of the Lyon bicycle sharing program has nothing to do with French culture. Here is why:

• Hell, France hosts two of the most well known car races on the planet (Le Mans and Monte Carlo).
• As a small country of 60 million people, France has two world class domestic car manufacturers (Renault and Peugeot).
• In 2006, the fatal accident rate in United States which has a population of 300 million inhabitants, was 14.24 accidents per 100,000 inhabitants. The same year, France had a fatal accident rate of 9.3 accidents per 100,000 inhabitants. With a total population five times smaller than the US, the fatal vehicle accident rate in France is only about a third less than the US.

My conclusion is that the French love their cars to the point that they seem very willing to die in them.

Putting forward such argument is not trusting that people would:

1. Take ownership of their own short and medium distance transport instead of waiting and waiting for a slow and polluting bus
2. Take a short bicycle trip, enjoy each others’ proximity and a beautiful day.
3. Empower themselves to do something to reduce Global Warming.

In the end, the only thing that matters are the facts. Only a well constructed pilot program will tell how Philadelphians will take on Philly BikeShare.

Below you will find the whole 1 hour and 53 minutes video clip of the January 17th launch of “Bike Share Philadelphia” at the Academy of Natural Sciences.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6345091304908236724&q=Bike+Share+Philadelphia&pr=goog-sl]Sources:

US vehicle accident statistics: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/,
EU vehicle accident statistics: http://ec.europa.eu/transport/roadsafety/