Bike-Share Fans Peddle NYC Experiment

NEW YORK -- It works in Oslo, it started this year in Barcelona and it's about to launch in Paris. But is New York ready for bike sharing?

A group that's hoping the answer is yes is providing 20 free bikes for a five-day experiment in green transportation, European style.

The bikes have been lined up in a gallery called Storefront For Art and Architecture, in Manhattan's trendy SoHo district, since Saturday. Anyone can stop by and take one for a half-hour spin. It's free, but cyclists must provide credit card information to ensure they bring the bike back.

"I don't typically ride a bike around the city, so I thought it would be interesting to just try it," said Sharon Jones, a lawyer who picked up a bike on Sunday. "I think that the city lends itself to actually riding a bike."

If the program is a hit, its backers will try to design a year-round bike-sharing system for New York.

"One of the major revelations for us is how real of a possibility this is," said David Haskell, executive director of the Forum for Urban Design, an organization of architects and planners that came up with the experiment. "In major European cities they have bike-share programs that exist."

Wall displays at the Storefront describe bike sharing in eight of those cities. In Stockholm, Sweden, there are 1,000 bikes and 80 pick-up and drop-off stations for a population of 800,000. In Lyon, France, there are 3,000 bikes and 350 stations. Paris' bike-sharing system is scheduled to start July 15 with 10,000 bikes and 750 stations.

Typically, users pay a membership fee, pick up a bike and then drop it off at the same station or a different one. They can locate the nearest available bike on the Web. The programs are underwritten by companies that put advertising on the bikes.

Haskell said he hopes bike sharing will eventually be adopted citywide in conjunction with Mayor Michael Bloomberg's campaign for a greener city.

"The amount it would cost is peanuts, compared to extending a subway line or adding another entire limited-stop bus network," he said.

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On the Net:

New York bike share: http://nybikeshare.org/