Sometimes changing the car culture requires bold strokes.  Paris recently revived an old idea: free bikes.  The city is working with outdoor advertising company, JCDecaux, to deploy over 14,000 bikes throughout the city for use by anyone.  In exchange for managing the program, JCDecaux will have access to outdoor advertising space throughout the city.  The program, an “icing on the cake” gesture by cities with a commitment to biking, has historically been plagued by theft.  Cities like Amsterdam, which has offered free bikes since the late 1960s, and Portland have tried “pure” models, in which bikes, all painted the same color, are left unlocked at random locations throughout the city.  Because the bikes are free to use and universally available, program sponsors assumed that no one would steal them.  That assumption proved to be fabulously wrong.  The program has been updated in recent years, and companies like JCDecaux now require participants to register and leave a deposit.  The bikes are free for the first 30 minutes and roughly $1.50 an hour thereafter.  The new model falls short of the “free” ideal, but human nature dictates that this is about as close to free as we can get.

Amsterdam is, of course, the bike capital of the developed world, and is the true model for all cities seeking to reduce the role of the car.  The bike culture in Amsterdam, and throughout Holland, is truly the product of a collection of thoughtful modifications to the standard city layout.  Cities in Holland have a network of dedicated bike lanes and paths, distinct from but usually parallel to all major roads.  The bike lanes nearly always include their own traffic signals, which are coordinated with traffic lights for cars.  Bikes are welcome on side streets, where the bike lanes don’t exist and are typically designed to encourage slow driving.  This transplant to Amsterdam nicely summarizes the common elements to the bike network in Holland.  And the result is a lifestyle in which the bike adapts to individual needs and not the other way around.  My family spent some time in Holland last summer and we spent a few days traveling around on bike.  Our observations were the same as the above blogs: biking is such a part of the lifestyle of the Dutch that it ends up not being a big deal.  Cyclists in the U.S. are a self-conscious bunch, with the increasingly conspicuous uniforms addressing not just safety concerns, but the need for affiliation with the cause.  In Holland, people ride bikes not because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s usually the easiest way to get where they need to go.

We also spent some time in Germany this summer, and I had a chance to see the new Lehrter train station in Berlin.  This building, which is a transparent hive of human and mechanized activity, is one of the most unique public structures I have ever seen. The station differs from most European central train stations in that trains don’t complete their runs at Lehrter.  Reunified Berlin lacks a true center, with train stations dispersed throughout the region as a consequence.  The challenge in designing the Lehrter train station was to create a grand destination without it being a terminus.  Instead of obscuring the station’s pass-through status, the station uses the ebb and flow of arriving and departing trains to infuse energy into the massive, shop-filled structure.  Apparently, the internationally-lauded design is not enough.  Prior to completion, Die Bahn, the national rail operator, decided to tinker with the final design for cost reasons, and the architect is suing to protect the integrity of his design.  While I sympathize with the architect, ripping out the interior roof seems like a drastic solution.  Some financial settlement seems more likely.  From my perspective, though, I find it refreshing that even the most intimate details of a train station are a matter of public debate.  I only wish we cared enough about the integrity of our train stations to engage in a high profile public spat.