The Sustainable Cities Blog

Posted By Thor Ritz, Contributing Writer

Courtesy of Ian Austen of the New York TimesLate last week, the NY Times (via Green Inc.) reported that Montreal's bike-sharing system is getting picked up by Boston and London. The folks over here at CISC think this is fantastic news and extend congratulations to both of these fine cities. With that said, we have to ask, "what about us, New York!?" Can we push for a sharing program that reaches all five Burroughs? Wouldn't this fit well with our more general livable streets movement?

It is not clear at this point if the roll-out in Boston — where local officials are mounting a push for more bike lanes as well — will be on the same scale as Montreal’s system, with hundreds of parking stations and thousands of bicycles. (An alternative model would be SmartBike D.C. in Washington, which uses a different docking technology and has only has 10 stations.)

Boston’s Metropolitan Area Planning Council confirmed that it has selected Bixi to put in place a bike-sharing program. But Amanda Linehan, a spokeswoman for the council, said that Boston and other municipalities must now negotiate contracts for the service.

Read full text here.