Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Bike-Share Program

Here is an article from the NY Times that I thought was interesting. The NY state senate didn't go for a proposal from NYC mayor, Michael Bloomberg, to start charging a fee to motorists who want to drive in downtown NYC. This fee would have been a way to discourage traffic and pollution, while increasing revenues. Since it doesn't look like congestion pricing will happen in the near future, the author of this piece looks at a policy that encourages different types of transportation in the city and that may reduce traffic and pollution: a bike-share program. He looks to a Parisian program that has just started that makes over 10,000 bikes available to people at over 750 locations throughout the city for a small fee. These bikes can be returned at any of the stations, eliminating the hassle that would come with returning bikes to the station from which you took them. I thought this idea was really creative; it not only encourages a healthy lifestyle, but it will also help remedy traffic congestion and pollution from cars.

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