portland public bike share

Yeah yeah yeah, who cares, you say.  And that would be the right response except that this one was actually proposed by Mark Twain in 1895.  Saw this on cycleicio.us, by the way.  Here's Mark Twain's quote:

Portland ought to lay itself out a little and macadamize all its streets just like this. Then it ought to own all the bicycles and rent ‘em out and so pay for the streets. Pretty good scheme, eh? 

And some links: the original post on cyclicio.us, Mark Twain's 1985 interview in Portland, and a Twain story called "Taming the Bicycle."  If you haven't read Twain's book Life on the Mississippi, you should.

On another note: Joel and Carl are in Toronto this weekend for Bike!Bike! and are planning to keep us updated on their trip here on this very blog!  Last year, Joel and Phil kept a blog from Bike!Bike!, still legible here.

bike sharing... via text message

A few weeks back, Smile Politely reported on a new bike sharing program in C-U: Grab-A-Bike.  Grab-A-Bike's still in the works, but other cities (and small towns) already have similar bike sharing programs up and running.  Smile Politely's article notes the logistical difficulties involved in dealing with maintenance and theft issues in bike sharing programs.

A bike sharing program at Emory University in Atlanta has come up with one solution: using text messages as a virtual key to unlock the bikes.  From The Chronicle of Higher Ed:

Students in Emory University's bike-sharing program will soon be able to unlock the bikes they want to use by sending a text message. The university will replace its current system, which requires manually checking out a key, with the automatic one, developed by students at the nearby Georgia Institute of Technology.

Each bike in the new "viaCycle" fleet will be equipped with a GPS and locking system. When students or employees want to use a bike, they will send a text message with the bike's identification number to a server. The server will forward the request to the bike and unlock it automatically. After using the bike, the rider will use an attached cable to secure it anywhere and send another text message to lock it.

More at the Chronicle's Wired Campus blog.