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A group of 400 gathered along with Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter to address the deal of a bike-share program in the city.

Mayor supports bike sharing

By: Mike Hess

Posted: 1/25/08

Despite the rain, around 400 people, including Mayor Michael Nutter, showed up for The Urban Sustainability Forum's "Bicycle Sharing: Breaking Philly's Car Habit" public forum Jan. 18 in the Academy of Natural Sciences.

The event was held to promote the idea of a bicycle share program in Philadelphia. Nutter, Representative Babette Josephs and Alex Doty, the executive director of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, spoke on the importance of such a program.

Doty said that the city has 225 miles of bike lanes, that 99 percent of SEPTA buses had bike racks, that biking has increased six percent in the last 17 years and that bikers in Philadelphia travel 260,000 miles on a daily basis.

Bike sharing decreases congestion, improves the air, decreases greenhouse gasses, and will decrease car use, but not mass transit, according to Doty.

Nutter, who entered the room to a standing ovation, agreed, and added, "Bicycles relieve traffic congestion, increase health [and] lower household costs; they do not have exhaust."

Nutter said ideas like this were to his goal "to reduce the city's carbon footprint." He also spoke about implementing administrative changes to make his government more equipped to deal with environmental problems.

"We're trying to make Philadelphia the No. 1 green city in America," Nutter said at the conclusion of his speech.

Bike sharing makes biking in general safer as well, according to Doty.

"If you double the number of bikers on a street, crash risk falls for each bicyclist by 33 percent," he said.

There were also three guest speakers who were experts on bike sharing, including Gilles Vesco, the vice president of Velo'v, a bike share program in France.

Vesco spoke about Velo'v, or "Love of Bikes" in English, as well as the "prerequisites" of a successful bike sharing program.

He said that the idea for bike sharing has been around in France for a long time but the city will need "a credible technological solution to secure parking the bikes in public space. You need a strong political will to take the risk to put a station at every street corner, and you need social expectation."

Vesco also explained other factors for success that would be important to incorporate into a Philadelphia design.

"[These include] easy access, netting of the public space, high density and proximity of stations, door to door mobility, and low prices - half an hour free, and a critical mass of bikes," he said.

Vesco said he believes Philadelphia has the capabilities to have a similarly successful system because much of the infrastructure is already in place.

The event was mostly organized by Russell Meddin, a community activist. Meddin's neighbors, including Mike Reed, a board of trustees member at the Academy Of Natural Sciences, often refer to him as the "mayor of Logan Square."

Meddin said he noticed Lyon's bike sharing program during a trip there, and he also noticed how similar Lyon was to Philadelphia in terms of population, geographical size, the terrain, rivers and universities.

He then teamed up with Brittany Bonnette, a student at the University of Pennsylvania who had spent a year in Lyon making similar discoveries, to try to bring bike sharing to Philadelphia.

"We want to make Philadelphia the most bike friendly city in North America, and in the world," Meddin said.