Biking Ideas for Detroit

There's an op-ed column in the NY Times, Bike Among the Ruins, that describes an incident in which the writer crashed his bicycle and flew across Woodward. He states that anywhere else he would have been quickly hit by an oncoming car, but "this being the Motor City, the street was deserted, completely motor-free." From there he suggests that Detroit can be reborn into a bicyclists' utopia with the bicyclists powering the city's revival.

Um.

Definitely it is an interesting essay. Definitely I dream dreams of Detroit becoming Bicycle Heaven. And yet I wonder exactly how late at night the writer was out riding because no matter how late I have been out, I have yet to see Woodward free of vehicle traffic. And there is something disturbing about his attempt to give the impression that Detroit is deserted and that the streets are open and just waiting for cyclists. Realistically--I bike in this city and I like biking here, but cars (and, really, there are a lot of cars in Southeastern Michigan) do not respect bicycles and seem to think we should be on the sidewalks. I do not bike on Woodward. I do not have nerves of steel so I try to stay on the smaller streets.

A bixi rental station in Montreal

This weekend I learned about bixi, a bike rental program provided by the Canadian city of Montreal. People pay a fee to access the system and there is no additional charge for rides that are 30 minutes or less. Stations are located every few blocks and a bike can be returned to any station. The plan is to have 300 rental stations and 3000 bikes. Right now there are considerably less than that and the bikes seem to be only in the city center.

I love this idea. But would it work in Detroit? I'm not sure. As I said Detroiters do not have a culture of easily sharing the road with bikes. Montreal is really a bike city--supposedly there are 500km of bike paths in the city. This is a city that had a bike parking station so that people could leave their bikes safely while they went to enjoy the jazz festival. It's a different kind of place. Additionally, the bixi depends on people using their credit cards at the self-service stations. There is a substatial cross-section of Detroit that would not be served by a system that operated in that way. Finally, it is the city that runs Montreal's system. The City of Detroit, which struggles to provide basic city services, could not afford to do that.

The self-service rental machine at a bixi station

Another bicycle model is that of the apparently now defunct Decatur Yellow Bikes. They took bike donations and repaired them, painted them yellow, and let folks "adopt" a bike for $25.

Hmmm...so many ideas...