Bike sharing has been around for a while with Yellow Bike as its most anarchist form and Paris as its most wildly successful incarnation (or at least most reported on.) But leave to the City of Montreal, home of North America’s longest running carshare program, to take the good idea one step further.
Time has awarded the Public Bike System, know locally as the Bixi, as one of its 50 best innovations of 2008. The magazine likes how the Bixi has done a good job of anticipating all the ways people can screw up the program, from sealed drive trains and components to a tracking device when people “forget” to return the bike. Are you listening Austin?
The other good news is that some of the other winners have provided me a gold mine of new nominees for the Dumbest Product of the Week! Thanks, Time.
on Nov 16th, 2008 at 11:21 am
By the way, the Velib system was nominated for a People’s Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design museum this year. Unfortunately, it did not win, but in the past few years I’ve noticed a rise in the number of cycling products that have been nominated, which can only be a good thing.