The Life-Sized City Blog

Photo by Dennis Steinsiek from Dutch-it.eu The news today out of Copenhagen is about the imminent failure of the city's new bike share system. Copenhageners are ignorning the bikes, few trips are being taken on them and they have become a tourist gimmick, not the commuter dream they hoped for. It's a rare event that a bike share system fails. Only a very few systems around the world have folded. Melbourne was the poster child for failure thanks to their helmet laws, helmet promotion, lack of infrastructure and anti-cyclist laws. Now it looks like Copenhagen will step into the failure spotlight. I am in two minds. I have never been a fan of the bikes or the system and have done little to conceal that fact. I said it was doomed to failure back in 2013 . I have wondered why Danish State Railways didn't just copy the decade-old OV-Fiets system from Dutch Railways instead of being seduced by useless, overcomplicated technology. You can read all about why I think the sys...

UPDATE 10 OCT 2014 The Copenhagen bike share bikes we talk about in this article have been on the streets for a few months now. The goal is that each bike is used 3 times a day - by local commuters. So far they are used 0.8 times a day - by tourists. Oops. Fail. These $10,000 shiny toys are already a tourist gimmick - like the originals in Copenhagen - and that does not encourage locals to use them. Locals never want to looks like tourists. Keep reading for more rationality. ---------- While La Rochelle, France can boast about having started the first proper bike share system in the mid-1970s , Copenhagen introduced the Bycyklen - City Bike - in 1995. Picture above and below, the bikes were cute gimmicks that lasted until late 2012. They worked on a shopping trolley system - put a 10 or 20 kroner coin in and get it back when you return it. The bikes were horrible to ride and it didn't take long for them to become tourist magnets. Most Copenhageners wouldn't touch th...