Bike Share arrives in... Moscow! (Russia)

Bike sharing seems to be trending upwards, as more and more cities adopt programs. You can now rent a bikeshare bike in Red Square. Story HERE.

Color of the bikes? RED, of course! (And they look like they have a rack of some sort on the front, probably so you can carry your AK-47 and some turnips.) As in pretty much every other place, bikes can be rented by the hour, day, week, etc., with fees encouraging shorter "trip" rentals.

Are shared bikes in Boise's future? Clancy recently stated - and who would disagree? - that a bike share would be a much better use of taxpayer dollars than a track-mounted trolley that circles downtown. Just the same, I can't support it if it's funded by the taxpayers. CitiBank sponsors the startup NYC effort (CitiBike). We have banks, grocery store corporate HQ, etc., in these parts... how about a WincoBike? (I'm not confident you could recover the startup cost via user fees... but I bet if those fees were set reasonably, the user fees could pay for the ongoing operational costs.)

Interestingly, Portland which is famous for bike-friendliness, and which also is home to Alta, the company that engineers many of the shared programs, doesn't yet have a bikeshare. (Is my understanding.)  But I believe talks are underway.