Future Bike

When we were in Paris a couple weeks ago, one of the things we were really impressed with was the French Government's bike rental scheme. Unlike the Deutsche Bahn's for-profit program, the French program is non-profit (actually, it is not only non-profit, the bike rental prices are government-subsidized, I think.). Which meant the prices for the bikes was incredibly reasonable. The first half hour was free and every half hour after that was perhaps 50 cents. And the bike stations were everywhere. I'm sure by now there have been some studies done to monitor the effectiveness of the program (I believe that the program was created primarily to get cars off the street, but other motivations included increasing general health of the population by helping increase their physical exercise levels and lowering pollution levels in the city), but I don't know about how successful the French government considers the program.

Here, you can take a look at the bikes.



They were a bit clunky, but I am guessing pleasant enough to ride.
We didn't get a chance to rent them because we didn't stay in Paris long enough.


































This morning I came across an article on a concept bike (and actually a whole concept for transportation) created for the city of London. Sounds like it was created for a competition (and this was the winning entry). You can read about the concept here if you are interested. But take a look at the bike they created/concepted - it's beautiful - and if it could actually work, pretty brilliant.


The idea is basically that when you use it like a bike, the energy you create by peddling is somehow stored within the bike. And then when you want to use it as a scooter, the energy that you stored within the bike is used to power the motor. The concept goes even further - showing how the bikes could be collapsed and folded to be transported on a bus - which in turn could be partially powered by the stored energy in the bikes (and used to pay your fare.) I wonder if something like this will really be reality in 20 years...or less?