Warsaw Turns Bicycle Sharing Accessible to Everybody
Lior Steinberg
Co-Founder & Urban Planner @ Humankind | Speaker | Writing on Human-Centric Cities | Author of the Children's Book "The Car That Wanted to Be a Bike"
It’s the era bike-sharing. During the last 20 years, over 1,000 cities have adopted the concept, and every year dozens of cities are launching their own system. Now, when more than 1.3 million bikes are in public service worldwide, it’s time to ask: can we make bike-sharing really inclusive?
Half a century of sharing
While the success of these bike-sharing systems is relatively recent, they are not new at all. Bike-sharing dates back to the 60's in Amsterdam, when Provo, a group of anarchist activists, painted a few abandoned bikes white and left them in the heart of the city. The Dutch police didn't like Provo's plan and quickly removed the white bikes off the streets. The project failed, but stayed in the heart of many Amsterdammers.
Three decades later Copenhagen launched the Bycykler K?benhavn. The Bycykler was in 1995 the first large-scale bike-sharing program with fixed stands, deposit system, and specially designed bicycles. These three features are now considered standard around the world.
The idea of the modern bicycle sharing system is simple: after obtaining an account, users are allowed to pick up and drop off bikes at any of the stations within the network. The bikes themselves are not the everyday bike you can find in the store. They need to be robust to survive the constant use of merciless riders.
While the pricing and scale of systems around the world vary, they typically meet at least one of the following needs:
- Alleviating the public transit's last mile problem. Systems designed for this need are usually enabling subscribers to get a bike for a short period, say 15 minutes, for no additional fee.
- Providing options to recreational cycling. In that sense, they may be a direct competition to the classic bike rental shops.
From A Cool System to a Public Sharing System
Let’s focus on the first aspect. I agree that recreational cycling is important, but in my onion bike-sharing system have a much greater potential when it comes to commuting, going to school, or getting around the city.
A good example of a system that does it well is Warsaw’s bicycle sharing system Veturilo. I recently visited the Polish capital and experienced it by myself. Veturilo launched four years ago and is offering 3,000 bikes over almost 200 stations. It's a pretty standard system, and the locals love it (during rush hours, it's practically impossible to find a vacant bicycle).
Veturilo is so successful since it satisfies a need. Warsaw is a big city, and although it’s got an excellent public transportation network, one often finds themselves walking more than 15 minutes from a transit stop to their destination. The Veturilo is helping to close these gaps. By offering bikes for free for the first twenty minutes, it's making journies more convenient. In that sense, Warsaw’s bike-sharing is becoming an integral part of the city’s transportation system.
But you can’t call it a public transit if it’s not really accessible to the everybody. That’s why the greatest feature of Veturilo is the children bikes it offers. Since last summer Warsaw’s younger residents can also rent a bike. I’ve seen these bikes only at one station, but that’s a good start.
The cute bicycles Warsaw offers are not a gimmick. They are a significant step towards enabling all people using the bike. Why should only adults be able to get around the city? If cities should be built for everybody, and public transit needs to be accessible to the all, then also the bicycle sharing systems should.
These days efforts are being made to make bike-sharing more equitable. The Better Bike Share conference, held in Philadelphia past June, dealt exactly with this challenge. While thinking about making bike-sharing more accessible, it’s important not to forget the children.
To be frank, I'm surprised that children bicycles are not more widespread among sharing systems. Warsaw is definitely a pioneer, and I hope more cities will follow the Polish capital.
Oh, and they also offer tandem bikes:
More Recourses:
1. The World’s Bike-Sharing Map, for up-to-date information about every single bike-share system around the world.
2. The story of Amsterdam’s White Bike is told in Pete Jordan's book In the City of Bikes.
3. Yes, Equitable Bike-Sharing Is Possible on CityLab
4. Reality check: Public bike sharing costs the public virtually nothing on Better Bike Share
Thumbnail image by R. Motyl / um Warszawa