Bike Sharing

In an editorial earlier today, the Daily Breeze, a newspaper covering the area between LAX and the Harbor, praised the city for moving ahead with a car sharing program and studying bike share.  In its own words the Breeze made the case for shared vehicles and managed to do it without calling supporters communists:

The AP reports that Boston is looking to launch a bike-share program -- and not the skimpy, half-hearted variety:

If you've read this BBC story currently making the rounds, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Vélib, Paris's wildly popular bike-share system, has suddenly been afflicted by an epidemic of theft and vandalism that threatens its very existence. Vélib bikes have been "torched," strung up from lamp-posts, and smuggled across borders, the Beeb reports in alarmist tones. A spokesman for JCDecaux, the outdoor advertising firm that operates Vélib, calls its contract with the city of Paris "unsustainable," and the whole system is referred to in the past tense.

LADOT: Several Obstacles Lie in Way of Bike Sharing for L.A.

Via the Bike-Sharing Blog, this vid shows a modular bike-share station getting set up in what must be record time. It's part of a trial system in Montreal called Bixi (contraction of "bike" and "taxi," rhymes with pixie), which launched last month and is set to ramp up with 2,400 bikes next April. Bike-Sharing Blog's Paul DeMaio explains what sets Bixi apart:

Check out this "news of the weird" item from WJRT-TV in Flint, Michigan, on last week's DC bike-share debut: