Europe is full of community bike share programs, from Barcelona's Bicing to Lyon's Vélo. The environmentally friendly free bike transportation is a fantastic idea. The idea has caught on in only a few cities in the U.S. including Washington D.C. Chapel Hill/Carrboro, North Carolina, and Ft. Collins, Colorado. Is Seattle ready for something like this? We consider ourselves one of the greenest cities. We're constantly complaining about the crappy public transportation, s maybe a bike sharing program is just what we need.
An landscape architecture student contacted us at Belltowner and asked what we thought about the idea. Would Belltowners catch on? How green are we really?
Hello Erica,
I am a landscape architecture student at North Dakota State University. We are currently doing our urban design studio project in Seattle; more specifically Lower Queen Anne. I don't really have a response to your specific issue with Mercer Street, but we plan to work with the Lower Queen Anne area to design a safe, accessible bicycle network system. Also proposing to impliment a goverment funded public bicycle sharing system with the intent to create network connections within the Lower Queen Anne area and beyond, reduce the reliance on cars in the area to relieve congestion, and thus will cut down the amount of carbon emmission generated by vehicular use, and it would also provide a cheap form of transportation easily accessible by all despite age or social class. Our intent is to also generate a 15-20 year plan to spec out how something like this would change/effect the area. Do you think something like this would catch on in Lower Queen Anne? And possibly catch on throughout the whole Seattle metro area? Please let me know what you think, or maybe write a blog on it asking people what their thoughts are. We are really interested in getting input from the people who live and care about this area. Thank you.
Zach Pleiss
So, would you be interested in a bike share program?
