Free bikes all over New York?

“Congestion pricing came to a halt after a head-on collision with Albany on Monday,” wrote David Haskell, founder of the New York Bike-Share Project, in an OpEd entitled The Path of Least Congestion in Wednesday’s New York Times. “The New York State Senate decided not to take up Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plan to charge a fee to drivers entering the busiest parts of Manhattan, causing New York City to miss a deadline to apply for federal financing that would have been essential for the program.

Now what?”

He goes on to suggest a bike sharing scheme like the new one in Paris:

“Last week, Bertrand Delanoë, Paris’s maverick and popular mayor, introduced the world’s largest and most ambitious bike-share program: 10,600 bikes (scaling up to 20,600 by the end of the year) available at 750 “docking stations” situated every 1,000 feet. With a swipe of a credit card and a modest fee, Parisians (and tourists) can now pick up or drop off a bike in any neighborhood in the city. Riders no longer need to worry about storing their bikes in tiny apartments. The program’s high-tech stations make theft virtually impossible. And with about twice as many bike stations as Métro stops, a free bike is pretty much always within reach.”

How cool would that be?