You are make me very sad right now. With the jealousy. 
2011-09-18 01:03:28
5
City biking in (southern) Europe
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to travel in Italy and in Spain (it was work-related). I was able to take the time to look around and get a feel for where I was. Some of the things that I saw were bicycling-related and I took pictures. As you might imagine, bicycling is different. In Florence: 1) Issues of salmoning, filtering, riding the sidewalks and so on were moot. All of these were happening and non one seemed to care. 2) Bicycles were utilitarian: no fancy components, with unrecognizable brands (or just bare downtubes) and a general disregard for upkeep. 3) People cycled to get get places and that was about it. I saw one roadie on the ring road but that was unusual. I did notice some cool stuff, like curb-stand parking:
And a really neat bike:
The city has rentals, but the system seems a bit difficult to deal with; there's an attendant and hours are limited (this picture is in the morning, after 9am).
In Granada I saw very few bikes, but I did notice this one. It's a bit hard to see since I didn't get a chance to take a good pic, but this is a street with two moving lanes of traffic. There 's a cyclist right in between the two scooters. I'm just plain impressed by this woman (though note that in these towns traffic speed is generally low by our standards; cars move the slowest, scooters the fastest, with bikes somewhere in between).
In Seville on the other hand biking is an integral part of transportation. The city has an extensive automated bike rental scheme that provides bikes for personal transport. The system is geared towards quick turnover: the first 30 mins are free, the next hour is 1 EUR and after that it's 2 EUR. For 10 EUR a week you get a "membership" that allows you to use the bikes. The bikes are in generally good shape though I learned to check the brakes before checking one out. The only real problem I ran into was racks that were empty or completely full. But the turnover is rapid; within 5 minutes you could leave/get a bike. I love this system.
The above picture shows a bikestand (with rental kiosk). The sidewalks on main streets are very wide, so there's room for a dedicated bike route (marked in green).There's even speed limit signs for the bikes. I like this picture because it's also missing one common mode of transportation...
2011-09-18 00:44:48
Barcelona's system is also excellent. For some reason, it's not available to tourists (although there are plenty of companies renting bikes to them too), but locals used it heavily when I lived there. You have to subscribe, but it only costs 35€ a year. Then the first 30 minutes are free, then it's 0.51€ for every half hour after that (and then something like 3.60€ per hour if you go over the 2 hour limit). My understanding is that most of the rest of the cost comes from revenues from paid street parking (aka car drivers pay for the bikes, which is awesome).
I wasn't into bike commuting yet while I was there (and never needed to because the metro/bus system there is phenomenal), but it seems like it would have been a great place to do it. The fact that cars are usually small and are less common than scooters would probably make the roads less frightening, plus what you said: "cars move the slowest, scooters the fastest, with bikes somewhere in between."
Barcelona is my favorite city in the world, and the transit system is one of many reasons why that's true. I will say that Sevilla's system looks like it's at least as good - I didn't realize it had a bikeshare since I haven't ever been there.
2011-09-18 01:04:25
I need to be up in Montreal next week; I'll try to find the time to check out their Bixi system...
The Seville system works with an ATM card; they put a 200 EUR hold on your card but other than that it just works, with my local Pittsburgh card.
My initial thought is that this kind of scheme might be difficult to implement in Pittsburgh, but I might be wrong. Downtown might be good, perhaps including the South Side and the Strip. This is based on the bike: it has 3 (widely spaced) gears and the bike is seriously heavy. I don't see being able to get up and down from the rest of town, unless you're a very in-shape biker and I don't think that the primary audience for this service is like that.
2011-09-18 22:32:54
All that would be needed to make them Pgh-friendly is a 7-speed IGH. Maybe they could equip a bunch of bikes for testing here and see how well we get around on them. I'd give them my North Side test (climb Federal, carry up/down Rising Main Way and James/Henderson steps, try to clobber some longitudinal drain grates on lower NSide). If they can manage to survive a couple weeks of that, they'll do.
2011-09-19 01:15:03