Bikes for all

This Greenstreet bike was found at Järntorget in central Gothenburg, an early evening ideal for rolling around the city. The lock being put through the green hole indicates that the bike is free to use.

The ice on the streets is long gone in most parts of Sweden, and suddenly the cyclist has become a common urban specie.
Personally I feel a bit lonely and limited without my bike. So when I am travelling I’m always very happy to come to places where I can borrow a bike. Seeing Paris, London, Barcelona or the Indian village of Chengalpattu from a bike has given me perspectives of those places that I wouldn’t have got from a bus window.

City bikes

This is why I am enormously fond of bike sharing systems, which are being introduced in more and more cities. Here in Stockholm there are 1000 city bikes for rent on the streets.
In Gothenburg the same system will be introduced this summer, but since a few years back it is already possible to borrow a bike thorugh a creative initiative.

Text a bike

Greenstreet is an association which has developed its own bike-sharing system in Gothenburg. One interesting thing about it is that there are no fixed stations for their bikes. They can simply be left and picked up anywhere in the city. On their website registred users can find the position of the bikes, and when you spot the green cycle of your choice, you send a text message and receive a code that will allow you to unlock the bike.
When it’s time to leave it, all you have to do is to send another text message, containing the address where the bike is being parked.

Winning concept

Recently the Swedish design agency LOTS won the first prize in a bike-share competition arranged by the Danish city of Copenhagen. LOTS’s OPENbike concept actually has a lot in common with Greenstreet, allowing people to leave the bikes wherever they choose to end the trip.

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

April 19, 2010

• cycling