Saturday Morning Ride - Bibliotheques

Good morning

• The Ride of Silence is scheduled for May 15th at 7 p.m. DC's ride is reportedly leaving from Hains Point, but I don't have any more information about it at this point. 
• Arlington's 6th annual Tour de Bibliotheques is scheduled for April 13 @9:45. This is a fun little ride that visits 7 of the county's 8 public libraries. 
• How to bike to the Wiehle Avenue Metro Station. The station has a bike parking room with space for 240 bikes (and there is more parking outside). 
• Beginning next week, members of B-Cycle (the major competitor to Bixi which provides bikes to Capital Bikeshare) will be able to use B-Cycle bikes in any of 15 American cities at no extra charge. Recipricosity is a big improvement for bike-sharing, one that makes it more valuable via the network effect. This will make B-Cycle a more appealing choice for other cities, and put pressure on Bixi-systems to match. Meanwhile, Denver's system is expanding with the help of a $650,000 Federal Highway Administration’s Transportation, Community, and System Preservation Program grant - which aims to make U.S. transportation systems more efficient while reducing their environmental impact

Comments

[Michael H.]

A Bixi network would be awesome, especially if they could include non-U.S. cities too, like Montreal, London and Paris. (All of those systems use Bixi bikes, I believe.)

Capital Bikeshare is great, but the Bixi supply and software issues are somewhat frustrating. The planned D.C. expansion seems to be moving along slowly, possibly because of the supply issues. And I think that the NYC and Chicago networks might be delayed because of software issues.

Just some friendly criticism of Bixi. I just want them to get everything sorted out so that D.C., Arlington and Maryland get their planned new stations. And I'd like to see the NYC, Chicago and other systems get started up because that expands the national bikeshare user base. Casual non-competitive cycling becomes more visible and hopefully that generates more political support for bikeshare and bike infrastructure around the country.