A sure sign of spring in Munich is the reappearance of these bikes sprinkled randomly around town. Deutsche Bahn, the German rail system provides these bikes around town and to rent them you call a # on the bike and you are given a 4 digit code to open the locking mechanism. You then type the code onto the touch screen to unlock the bike and ride away! I think that the charge is incurred on your cell phone bill. When you are finished with the bike, you press "return bike" on the touchscreen and then another code is generated by the bike. You call that code into a call center, give them the code and the bike's whereabouts and walk away.
As you can see, these bikes are not so fashionable, but are very functional..there is a child seat on the back and long fenders for bad weather. I think it is a pretty neat concept, and you do see people riding around town on them. I know that similar programs have been attempted in the US in cities like Boston and Washington DC, but the theft of the bicycles ended up making the programs be scrapped.
That is fantastic - i wish something like that would work here, but as you said, theft would prevail. And here, you KNOW some dumb person would walk away from the bike with their kid still in the child seat...
ReplyDelete