As more and more cities implement bicycle-share options into their city infrastructure, cyclists and eco-conscious folks around the world can rejoice knowing there are convenient green transport options around that do not contribute to further totraffic congestion. While modern bike sharing is often thought of as a western idea, it's interesting to observe how cities outside of Europe and North America are coping with bike-share programs.
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China has always had a history of cycling, since it is a nation with a massive population yet in the past decade there has been a shift focusing on car culture. As a result, it has been impossible to build enough roads to support all the traffic, so officials have been looking at alternative methods to ease congestion. With the popularity of bike sharesexploding, it's encouraging to see how a system can work in large cities such as Mexico City where traditionally, the car is king.
GOOD recently had this post on how bike sharing was thriving in Mexico City's chaotic streets but Hangzhou, China actually boasts the largest bike share program in the world and so far, it's a success. With a population of almost 7 million, this southern Chinese city's 50,000-bike system has grown considerably since its inception in 2008. Hangzhou started with 61 service points and 2,800 bicycles and has ballooned to 2,050 service points with 51,500 bicycles, dwarfing other cities such as Montreal, Paris and Washington, D.C., often praised for their efficient bike share programs.
While the riders talk mostly about the convenience of bike-sharing, there’s little doubt Hangzhou’s red bicycles help ease transportation woes as residents integrate the bike share with the metro and bus systems.
Stations are spaced less than a thousand feet from each other in the city center, so 240,000 trips are made on the average day. As Bradley Schroeder of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy says in the video, "I don't think there is anywhere you can stand in Hangzhou for more than a minute or two where you wouldn't have a Hangzhou Public Bike go past you." The success of the program doesn't stop there though. The Hangzhou Bicycle Company, who maintains the bike share, plans to expand the system to 175,000 bicycles by 2020.
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