The Democratic and Republican political conventions will be here soon, with the Democrats meeting August 25-28 in Denver and the Republicans September 1-4 in St. Paul. Both conventions will have an unusual feature: bike-sharing programs that will make available 1000 bikes to the public in each city for free.

The program is a joint venture of the Humana Freewheelin bike-share program and Bikes Belong, a non-profit bicycle advocacy organization funded by the bicycle industry. Humana is a large health insurance company that has had success with an employee bike-share program at its headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky.

I’m excited about the convention bike-share opportunity because I’ve been following the spread of “new generation” bike-sharing programs for the past year, particularly the enormous Velib’ program in Paris, France, which started last summer. These newer bike-sharing programs are more high-tech than the “yellow-bike”-type of program that some cities and college campuses have had. Those older programs have usually been plagued by theft, vandalism, and disrepair, since the bikes are not locked, there is no system of checking the bikes out, and there are few resources for maintaining the bikes.

The newer bike-sharing programs typically make bikes available at stations, where they are locked. Users register for the rental program and use a credit card to obtain a bike. If the bike is not returned, the user is charged a large fee. Just this month, Washington, D.C., became the first North American city to launch a bike-share program. (See a Washington Post article on that subject). Montreal, Canada, will follow, as will St. Xavier University in Chicago.

The Velib’ program in Paris - which, like many other bike-share programs, is supported by outdoor advertising revenue - has been a huge success. It makes 20,000 bikes available at over 1000 locations. According to an article in The Times, in its first year its users have made 27 million trips by bicycle, an incredible number, and bike use in Paris has increased 70 percent.

Eyeing that success, North American bike advocates are hoping bike sharing will make a difference here as well. They even have some help at the top. Several U.S. Congressmen, including Jim Oberstar of Minnesota, issued a “bike-partisan” challenge to bike-share users in the political convention cities: take 10,000 trips and tally up 25,000 miles of riding in both cities collectively. If you’ll be in Minneapolis-St. Paul September 1-4, you can register now to ride the bikes.

I hope the Freewheelin program at the political conventions does lead to lasting change. After the convention, 70 bikes will remain in each convention city for use by the public. The rest of the 1000 bikes will be donated to a variety of organizations.

I’ll be up there in Minneapolis-St. Paul helping out as a volunteer. You can register online if you want to do the same. You’ll receive food, beverages, and a t-shirt in return for your service.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Biking/Walking, Minnesota, Politics, Transportation.