Paris

Vélib Celebrates 6-Year Anniversary (Infographic)

Vélib, Paris’ groundbreaking bike-sharing program that one could argue is responsible for the boom in 3rd-generation bike-sharing programs in major cities around the world (I would argue that), has now been around for 6 years. (Wow. Time flies….) To commemorate the anniversary, the Vélib team created the wonderful infographic below (h/t The Bike-sharing Blog). Check …

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Top Bike Share Programs… In An Infographic

Obviously, we’re big fans of bikes here. I realized several years ago that the common line and piece of advice “stop to smell the roses” matched bicycle transportation excellently. You see and smell and appreciate so much more on bike than in a car. I’d say that you do less so than on foot, but …

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Berlin — Bike Paradise

I recently took a short little vacation to Berlin (just about 5-7 hours away by train from where I live). While I had noticed when I visited the first time (2 years ago) that it was a tremendous bike city and put it at #7 in my bike city photo tours series, I didn’t bike around the city on that visit. Additionally, it was rather cold and rainy, so biking wasn’t in full bloom there.

This time around, we (my partner Marika and friend Salah) were set on biking, a bit at least. The weather was nice and our friend got us some bikes. We ended up going on a bike ride that lasted 5 hours or so on our first full day there.

Paris to Ban SUV’s?

The City of Lights could soon become the city without S.U.V.’s. Government officials in Paris are considering putting in effect a series of regulations that would heavily tax, or completely ban, S.U.V.’s and high-polluting, old diesel vehicles from entering the city center. That’s some recent news from perhaps my favorite city on the planet. One …

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Bike Theft and Vandalism Not an Issue For U.S. Bike-Sharing Programs

Unlike the Vélib bike-sharing program in Paris, the largest in the world, which has had a bit of a problem with bike theft and vandalism, it seems that this is an issue of little or no concern for U.S. bike-sharing programs (and others around the world). Noah Kazis of Streetsblog New York City writes: For …

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New York City Bike-Sharing Program Plans Move Forward

I wrote on New York City’s large, potential bike-sharing program a few months ago, the only proposed bike-sharing program in North America that will compare to the famous and highly successful Paris Vélib’ system (or even Barcelona’s Bicing program). NYC’s bike-sharing program has just moved forward now, with New York City’s Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) Commissioner Janette …

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Where’s the World’s Most Painful Commute?

I was just writing earlier on the power of cities and the progressive transportation choices cities can take to turn the world around (environmentally, economically, and otherwise). Looking at this from a different (and perhaps more negative) angle, IBM recently released a global “Commuter Pain Study.”