January 17, 2008

Free bikes stay put in Brussels

Free bike systems have been a real success in some cities like Paris, Barcelona and other countries, this works very well. The idea is that someone picks up a bike from the racks and then rides it whenever they wish, once finished the bike is simply returned to the rack or to the one nearest to them.

But one place this has failed to make an impact is Brussels, for some reason or another the project has flopped which has been a disappointment, but it may not have been set up right in the first place.

It seems that there were only 250 bikes in a city of over a million people, but in comparison if we look at Paris, they have 20,000 bikes for their population of two million people, so it is clear that the system has not been managed well and so could be the reason for the failure.

Source [Tree Hugger]