Wheel Talk: Why spoke-sharing works
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Dear Wheel Talk: I don't see why I should be excited about bike share.
Mitchell Leff for the City of Philadelphia
Dear Wheel Talk: I don’t see why I should be excited about bike share. We don’t need clueless tourists biking everywhere. We need more bike lanes for local bicyclists.
—Benjamin Cranklin
Dear Ben: Don’t knock clueless tourists — they are an important mid-tier species in the economic food chain. And can we please retire the “Why are we paying for X when we can’t afford Y?” mantra? Bike share isn’t taking money away from our roads, and will likely spur more bike lanes due to increases in bike traffic and a larger bicycling constituency.
Philly bicycling is growing up, trading its Chuck Taylors for loafers and looking up “How to close gauged ears.” Bike share is the latest sign of this maturation. And if Philly’s bike-share system is like those in other American cities, locals are going to be the ones making the most use of these bicycles.
Many of those locals also own personal bikes, but for them (and you!) bike share solves many city-biking problems. If the forecast calls for afternoon rain, you can leave your fixie at home, take bike share to work, and then bus it home. Or say your friend from out of town is visiting; bike share solves the two-girls-one-bike problem (without perilous Google searches).
It won’t hurt your budget, either. Philly hasn’t announced its pricing scheme yet, but in other cities a yearly membership costs about $100.
Am I worried about Mr. Magoo (of the Connecticut Magoos) thoughtlessly biking down Ridge Avenue? Maybe a little. But each bike-share station will have maps, and each bike may display the rules of the road. Helmets won’t be mandatory, and nobody has yet figured out how to pair helmets with bike share. But vending machines are being developed that dispense cheap, reusable or recyclable helmets, and I expect Philly will be paying attention to those developments. Check out phila.gov/bikeshare for updates on Philly’s system.
We shouldn’t underestimate people’s ability to figure this out. In the first five months of NYC’s Citi Bike, five million trips saw only two dozen injuries, mostly minor. And if New Yorkers can do it, we can do it better.
