A bike from Montreal’s Bixi bike sharing system.(Photo: Steve Durrant/Alta Planning)

With the first of their two bike sharing demonstrations coming Friday to Waterfront Park (followed by an event at Sunday Parkways this weekend), the City of Portland has ramped up its efforts to inform the public about how the system might work. They’ve also launched [...]

A bike from Montreal’s “Bixi” system.

Five companies interested in partnering with the City of Portland to implement a bike-sharing system have responded to a call for proposals to take part in a demonstration event in mid-August. Meanwhile, the Boston Globe is reporting that the City of Boston will implement, “the nation’s first citywide bike-sharing [...]

Montreal officials aboard their “Bixi” bikes.(Photo: Bixi)

Unlike other projects that the City of Portland has been accused of rushing into (the Sauvie Island Bridge relocation attempt and the Lents/Memorial Coliseum baseball debacle come to mind), no one can ever say that they moved too quickly on bike-sharing.
It was back in February of 2007 that we [...]

[NOTE: Streetsblog has a different perspective on this story. They say Velib corporate sponsor JCDecaux is manipulating this story in the media to their benefit. Read more here.]

Over half the original fleet of 15,000 specially made bicycles have disappeared, presumed stolen…vandalism and theft are taking their toll…The company which runs the scheme, [...]

Tom Miller(Photo © J. Maus)

Welcome to the final installment of our guest article series on bike sharing in Portland.
The series is written by Tom Miller, chief of staff for Portland City Commissioner and Mayor-elect Sam Adams. Yesterday, Tom laid out asked some of the questions that must be answered in order [...]

Tom Miller(Photo © J. Maus)

Welcome to Part Five of our six-part, guest article series on bike sharing in Portland.
The series is written by Tom Miller, chief of staff for Portland City Commissioner and Mayor-elect Sam Adams. Yesterday, Tom laid out what’s at stake for Portland in choosing a bike share vendor.
In [...]

Tom Miller(Photo © J. Maus)

Welcome to Part Four of our six-part, guest article series on bike sharing in Portland.
The series is written by Tom Miller, chief of staff for Portland City Commissioner and Mayor-elect Sam Adams. On Friday, Tom shared experiences from the bike share system in Stockholm, Sweden, which is operated [...]

Tom Miller(Photo © J. Maus)

Welcome to Part Three of our six-part, guest article series on bike sharing in Portland.
The series is written by Tom Miller, chief of staff for Portland City Commissioner and Mayor-elect Sam Adams. Yesterday, Tom shared his initial impressions on bike sharing systems from a recent trip to Scandinavia. [...]

Tom Miller(Photo © J. Maus)

Welcome to Part Two of our six-part, guest article series on bike-sharing in Portland.
The series is written by Tom Miller, chief of staff for Portland City Commissioner and Mayor-elect Sam Adams.
Yesterday, Tom gave us some background on Portland’s efforts to launch a bike share program.
Today’s article is [...]

Tom Miller riding in the 2006 Bridge Pedal.(Photo © J. Maus)

Welcome to the first in a six-part series; Bike-share in Portland: A status report. The author of this guest article series is Tom Miller. Miller is the current Chief of Staff for Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams and he’ll follow Adams into the [...]

On Monday, the New York Times featured a story about bike-sharing in Europe.
I’ve got an in-depth story (guest article actually) about Portland’s bike-sharing status that will hit the Front Page in the next few days, but there were so many great quotes in this story that I thought it deserved a story (and [...]

Bike Loan Program staff: Dave Villalobos, Briana Orr, and Price Armstrong.(Photos courtesy U O)

The University of Oregon has found something constructive to do with the many bikes that are abandoned and impounded on their Eugene campus each year — the bikes get refurbished and then loaned out to students through their new Bike Loan Program.
The [...]

A Freewheelin’ station in Denver.(Photo: Freewheelin/Flickr)

A bike-sharing program that started as an employee perk for Lousville, Kentucky-based Humana Corporation has taken the national stage this week.
Humana — a $30 billion a year, 9,000 employee health insurance company — has partnered up with Bikes Belong and a host of bike manufacturers to set up [...]

The crew from NYC-based Streetfilms has published a good overview of the recently launced SmartBike DC bike-sharing system.
With bike-sharing still in the plans for Portland, it’s worth keeping tabs on how things go in D.C.
As for Portland’s plans, here’s a little update on where things stand.

Bikes await customers at Penn Quarter station in Washington D.C.(Photo: afagen/Flickr)

After several months of delay following the initial “launch”, Washington D.C. is basking in the glow of becoming the first large U.S. city to offer a bike-sharing system.
Will their approach work? Should Portland be jealous? Why weren’t we first?

“There are a lot of [bike-sharing] systems out there and we really want to pick the best model.”–Shoshanah Oppenheim, transportation policy aide for Commissioner Adams

With the announcement last week that the City of Portland has canceled their search for a bike-sharing vendor, some are wondering what’s next in Portland’s public-bike future.
Far from giving up on [...]

Portland will have to wait for a bike-sharing program like this one in Vienna.Photo: Ethan Jewett

The process to select a vendor that would implement a public bike-sharing system in Portland has been canceled.
In a letter just released by the City of Portland’s Office of Management and Finance, Purchasing Agent Jeffrey Baer writes:

Washington DC has beat Portland in becoming the first U.S. city with a bike-sharing system. This photo shows a construction site where one of the new SmartBikeDC racks will be located.(Photo: afagen on Flickr)

Now that Washington D.C. is getting national media attention for their “first of its kind in the U.S.” bike-sharing system, I [...]

House CAO Dan Beard(Photo House CAO Office)

Dan Beard, the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives will be in Portland later this week. Beard is slated to speak about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “Green the Capitol” initiative at the Better Living Show coming to the Portland Expo Center on Sunday (3/29).
Pelosi’s [...]

[Update: 12/6, 9:47pm (see below)]

Photo: Ethan Jewett

Commissioner Sam Adams’ office has put together a panel to review the proposals of the three companies who responded to their request to implement a bike-sharing system in Portland.
The request called for a company that could manage the “delivery and operation of a bicycle fleet [numbering 500 bikes] for [...]

A Velib station on rue Saint-Honoré in Paris.(Photo: luc legay/Flickr)

After nearly a month since the launch of their ambitious “Velib” bike-sharing program, the city of Paris has been transformed by two-wheeled transit.
An article published today in the Times of London states that in the first three weeks, the bikes were borrowed a whopping [...]

[Updated: 7/24, 7:34am]

A bike-sharing system in Vienna.Photo: Ethan Jewett

By now, everyone’s heard of the “Velib” bike-sharing program launched by Paris earlier this month.
That program — whose name so poetically is formed from the French words for “bike” and “liberty” — placed 10,600 bikes at 750 stations for use by Parisians and tourists alike [...]

As I reported last month, Commissioner Adams is serious about bringing a bike rental program to Portland.
I just got an email from Max Coffman from Adams’ office. He has just published the Request for Proposals (RFP) for a potential bike rental system in Portland.

[A bike-sharing system, like this one in Vienna, could be on its way to Portland.] Photo: Ethan Jewett

City Commissioner Sam Adams has stepped up his effort to bring a bicycle-sharing system to Portland.
Although still in “preliminary stages,” Adams’ staffer Max Coffman — who works with Adams and Senior Policy Director Roland Chlapowski on [...]