Brief History of Bike-Sharing
See also
| 1st Generation |
|
There have been three generations of bike-sharing systems over the past 45 years. The 1st Generation begins in July of 1968 in Amsterdam, Holland, with the White Bikes (Witte Fietsen) program. White Bikes were literally free, identification of users was simply out of scope, as were any mechanisms for preventing theft and vandalism. The program soon collapsed with bikes thrown into the channel or kept for personal use. White Bikes’ shortcoming caused a long time gap until next generation Bike-Sharing programmes showed up.
|
Famous words about bicycles:
David Perry
"What do you call a cyclist who doesn't wear a helmet? An organ donor."
Karl Kron, Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle
"All creatures who have ever walked have wished that they might fly. With highwheelers a flesh and blood man can hitch wings to his feet."
Grant Petersen
"Think of bicycles as rideable art that can just about save the world."
Jim Malusa
"Things look different from the seat of a bike carrying a sleeping bag with a cold beer tucked inside."
Julie Furtado
"The secret to mountain biking is pretty simple. The slower you go the more likely it is you'll crash."
Daniel Behrman, The Man Who Loved Bicycles
"You never have the wind with you - either it is against you or you're having a good day."
Amy Webster
"The sound of a car door opening in front of you is similar to the sound of a gun being cocked."
H.G. Wells
"Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia."
Jo Burt (Thanks, Jacquie)
"If we all, mountain bikers, cyclists, multinational companies, Jo Public, respected the land like old civilizations we wouldn't get so many punctures. Earth's revenge."
James Bethea
"Messengers and mountain bikers share a common chromosome."
Sloan Wilson
"The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles. A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom. The realization that this is what the child will always need can hit hard."
Steve Johnson
"Cycling is unique. No other sport lets you go like that - where there's only the bike left to hold you up. If you ran as hard, you'd fall over. Your legs wouldn't support you."
Jacquie Phelan
"Until mountain biking came along, the bike scene was ruled by a small elite cadre of people who seemed allergic to enthusiasm."
James E. Starrs
"Melancholy is incompatible with bicycling."
Ann Strong
"The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it gets old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the entire community."
Author Unknown, from Demerarest's Family Magazine, 1895
"The bicycle will accomplish more for women's sensible dress than all the reform movements that have ever been waged."
Bill Emerson, "On Bicycling," Saturday Evening Post, 29 July 1967
"A bicycle does get you there and more... And there is always the thin edge of danger to keep you alert and comfortably apprehensive. And getting there is all the fun."
Bill Strickland, The Quotable Cyclist
"For instance, the bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created: Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon."
Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green
"The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart."
Flann O'Brien
"Why should anyone steal a watch when he could steal a bicycle?"
Frances Willard, How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle
"Tens of thousands who could never afford to own, feed and stable a horse, had by this bright invention enjoyed the swiftness of motion which is perhaps the most fascinating feature of material life."
Author Unknown
"It would not be at all strange if history came to the conclusion that the perfection of the bicycle was the greatest incident of the nineteenth century"
John Howard
"The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine."
Christopher Morley
"The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets."
OBIS Project Findings, 2011
"The three largest bike sharing schemes in Europe are used for trips equivalent to going around the world ten times each day"
Albert Einstein
"Life is like riding a bicycle - in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving."
H.G. Wells
"When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race"
Andreas Empirikos
"Poetry is the development of a shining bicycle... This is a never ending trip."
Gilles Vesco, Vice President of Greater Lyon
"There are two types of mayors: those who have bikesharing and those who want bikesharing."
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
"Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of riding a bike."
| This website and its content is copyright of Cyclopolis - © Cyclopolis 2011. All rights reserved. |  |