Bike-share is coming to NYC, Bike-share is coming…

The midnight ride of Paul Revere

Paul Revere’s magical midnight ride from town-to-town warning the countryside the British were coming is a wonderful part of United States history. I’ve enlisted Paul Revere to warn the NYC driving public that bike share is coming to NYC in the spring of 2012. More than 10,000 bicycles will be available to the biking public at Kiosks through NYC. Just what we need…the loss of more on-street parking spaces.

Transportation Alternatives trumpets:

“Bike share is coming to New York City thanks to the support of New Yorkers like you! When you officially declare yourself a New Yorker for Bicycling, Transportation Alternatives (T.A.) will keep you up to date on the all the latest developments in New York City Bike Share and the ways you can get involved. “

Some facts & figures

• 8,391,881 people live in NYC (NYC Department of City Planning)
• 46% of NYC households own cars (Streetsblog)
• 30% of NYC household that own cars, drive to work (Answers.com)
• More than 1M cars enter NYC every day (Answers.com)
• 200,000 people bike every day in NYC (bikesbelong.org)
• 0.6% of the people bike to work (Wikipedia)

Commentary

Mayor Bloomberg is an advocate of public transportation alternatives to cars in NYC; while his Commissioner of the Department of Transportation is an inflexible proponent of bicycle-riding as the bested way to navigate the mean streets of NYC.

Alta Bicycle Share was selected to launch the bicycle-sharing program. Alta has experience with similar programs in Boston and Washington. Hopefully, this experience will help to avoid disaster in launching and operating NYC bike-share.

I’m wondering what the driving public thinks about the Mayor’s bike-sharing initiative, which is totally supported by the Queen of the NYC DOT. Since there are so much more cars per household in NYC, what constituency turbo-charges the Mayor and his minion to back bicycle-riding so fervently?

Do you think the use of the bike sharing program in NYC is related to race? or income? Check out this new report for some important insights.