The Transformative Potential of Bike Sharing

One of the complaints currently being voiced in the UK press aboutthe new public bike start-up in the city of Bristol is that it is too small, insufficiently visible and generally hard to get at -- and that it thus fails to achieve the level of massive use that is necessary if what you want is a city transformation project. Is that what your public bicycle project is supposed to do? Transform your city?It can, you know. Not all by itself, of course. But if you put it together with a carefully thought-out integrated package of new mobility measures, you can create a powerful component of the transformational process.

In Denmark, 4000 people die every year because of the health hazards related to cars -- and that's ten times greater than the number of people actually killed in car accidents. Respiratory illnesses, heart disease, stress-related illnesses caused by noise pollution, etc.

Very few people are aware that the levels of dangerous microparticles from exhaust are actually higher INSIDE the car than if you're cycling next to it. So let's focus on this fact and hopefully encourage motorists to think twice about their actions.

Shouldn't we have rules dictating that all advertisments for automobiles must have clearly visible warning labels? There are a variety of smokingtexts that can be applied to the car health warnings.