Citibike Wien
Like many cities in the EU, Vienna has recently adapted an active city-wide bicycle rental programme. The concept is similar to Zipcar in the US: There are many bicycle parking stations throughout the city, and the user simply takes a bicycle whenever it is needed and then returns it to any of the other stations when they are through with it.
With their baskets and hard-core dress guards, the citibikes are rather charming, if heavy on the advertisements.
Melbourne has attempted something like this. It's had a lot of criticism due to things like not providing helmets, when we have very strict helmet laws. I think they've attempted to rectify that particular problem, but I haven't actually seen any helmets for hire yet myself.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.melbournebikeshare.com.au/
Adelaide has a simliar thing, and the bikes are free to hire during the day in the city. From what I understand, it's functioning quite well but for some reason Melbourne City Council (allegedly) didn't model their system on the Adelaide one... Go figure.
http://www.bikesa.asn.au/servlet/Web?s=2060570&action=changePage&pageID=530953101