And of course, all the manufacturers have learned from this. Paris was first. Now the companies know what parts are most vulnerable, and how to deter theft.

One final issue: JCDeceaux reportedly allows you to “lose” your bike 3 times before they can take your deposit, due to consumer protection laws there. I think american companies will be more ready to ensure that a stolen bike is quickly met with a $500 credit card charge.

Isn’t this somewhat akin to the fox looking after the chickens?

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/925374/racv-wins-melbourne-bike-hire-contract

…and how glibly the helmet issue is airbrushed into a little mention: “while regular users will be encouraged to use their own helmets, operators are yet to decide whether it will make helmets available” – really? Is this a question of corporate ‘civil disobedience’ (yay!!!) or bureaucratic flag-waving, and ‘look-we-gave-it-our best-shot-but-it-was-always-going-to-fail’? (sigh!)

How can a club of motorists possibly have the interests of cyclists (and the environment) ‘at heart’?

PS: btw, following on from my appearance in the District Court of New South Wales last Monday, my final appeal is set down for the sittings starting next February 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9NvJfwF9bI

We desperately need bike share in Australia, not to test our civility, but because we presntly have a bike culture not conducive to the cycle commuting we need to embrace, and bike share can help change that.

There are many reasons for this culture, but the bottom line is that there is now almost a state of war between the Lycra clad cyclists and other traffic. This reached it’s nadir a week ago when one of the Lycronistas mounted a bus and beat up the driver.

What can bike share do? It can bring women into commuter cuycling for one thing. Presently only about 13% of bike commueters are women.

It can also slow us down by showing us that sitting upright up on a hike (all bike share bikes are the sit up and beg type) is not only very comfortable, but much safer. You see better and are see better.

Sitting upright also provides the chance to relate to other traffic in a friendly way, even to wave. This is almost impossible in the hunched over posture which is now the norm. Thus, sitting up is one way to bring some peace to our roads.

I first discovered what was wrong in covering the story of Sue Abbott who was going to court in her country town of Scone, NSW, to fight our compulsory helmet law. Sue has never worn a helmet and even after her conviction, still refuses to.

It was not so much her defense which impressed me, but the way she rode her sit-up bike, elegantly upright, as if she was in Copenhagen, and not on an Aussie country road. (It’s in the movie)

Also, shock, she waved to motorists. Her look and style were stunningly different. Her film, Sue Fights Helmets, is on my blog, And So To Bike

Http://datillo.wordpress.com/

Now, the drama expands. ALTA, a US company assoiciated with Bixi, has just won the contract to install Bike Share in Melbourne.

But will it ever come to Australia? As Alison Cohen, who works for ALTA, candidly confesses in another film on the blog,(Bike Share and Helmets Don’t Mix?) they are very far from working out how to deliver a helmet along with the share bike. Automatic dispensing for health and safety reasons, is impossible.

Another informant states that a bike share scheme has never been implemented in a city with compulsory helmet laws.

How ironic it would be if the only thing the Federal Government here has ever done for cycle safety, bringing in our compulsory helmet law, ended up inadvertently sabotaging a scheme which can, potentially, do far more for cycle safety than those mandatory helmets.

Bike share, if we get it, would bring the thousands more cyclists onto the roads, and it’s well established that there is signifcant safety in numbers.

This is a cliff hanger to follow. Will Bixi lead to a rethink of these helmet laws which now keep us out of step with the rest of the world?

A rethink which is considered politically impossible, but stranger things have happened here.

Mike Rubbo