Bicycles

The petition is entitled Provide Free Bicycles in city centres and the explanatory notes say

"In Holland people have free access to utilise bicycles to get from A to B. We should implement this in city centres with a basic standard bike available for people to use whenver they want. This will encourage people to cycle from one place to another without having to use taxis or cars."

At sight of this petition, I dashed off to find my handy Dutchman on IRC to ask him about this. First, of course, we had the usual Holland-is-only-a-small-part-of-the-Netherlands conversation. Don't call the Netherlands Holland; I'm liable to get Cross.

Then he said he believed there had been some "white bike" initiatives; he's not sure the bikes were actually available free and he's not sure they're still running, and he also thinks they were only in Amsterdam. He's under the impression that the first initiative failed because the bikes were too generic, so people just stole them, and they broke easily. A more recent project involved very sturdily-built bikes, which looked more unusual and so were harder to steal. He adds that many people tend to regard an unlocked bike as fair game and just take it away, but that this is not in any way policy.

So firstly, this petition seems to be based on something hazily-heard about a non-widespread thing.

Secondly, of course - there's a reason bikes are more popular in the Netherlands than in most of the UK. The Netherlands is flat. Any such program in Durham, say, or Bristol, would fall very flat on account of how the city centres in question aren't flat.

It's an interesting idea. I'm just very unconvinced that it is in any way practical.

Update: said handy IRC Dutchman posted an article about one of these schemes which failed and another article (unfortunately in Dutch) about another such scheme which is still operational. The latter, he says, "is in the national park in the central hills of the Netherlands. Not entirely flat country" but adds "not excessively mountainous either, of course :-)". A quick translation of the latter scheme says "copied from the Amsterdam white bikes concept in 1975, now, 30 years later, they have 1700 white bikes in the park."

Another Dutch friend and I have argued about Cambridge: I say it's flat; he says it's not. I therefore assume this latter is about as hilly as Cambridge.