Commons on wheels

Whole Earth, Fall, 1998 by Lyssa Mudd

Free community BIKE programs seem radically simple: people use bikes rather than own them. Here's how they work: take old, beat-up bikes, fix them so they run, and paint them, handles to spokes, one bright color. Let them loose onto the streets with the simple instructions to use this bike at your own risk and leave it in a public place for the next rider. It all starts with the idea that it's possible to create an urban commons, that people are trustworthy and community-minded, and that shared resources promote co-operation. The programs are also meant to encourage healthy, alternative means of transportation, and to save old bikes from premature deaths at the dump.

The US experiment with free bikes originated in Portland, Oregon. foe Keating and Thomas O'Keefe of the United Community Action Network started the Yellow Bike Program after watching a documentary on Amsterdam, where a similar program had been in place for years. Immediately after they released the bikes, the yellow cycles became a celebrated feature of Portland's urban landscape. Calls flooded in from groups around the country wanting to duplicate the program. Everyone from tourists to homeless people to business executives took them for a spin. The press lauded the experiment and proclaimed that trust and community spirit were alive and well in America.

But, as a Portland police officer remarked, "It didn't take people long to figure out that a free bike is just a free bike." Out of hundreds of yellow bikes, almost all were stolen, vandalized, or used well beyond repair. They sat abandoned in garages and backyards, or rusting at the bottom of local waterways. One made it as far as Spokane. The program ground to a halt, as did many other community bike efforts, including Amsterdam's.

Maybe treating bikes as shared resources was too radical a proposition. Unlike park benches, streets, sidewalks, and playgrounds, bicycles are small,- mobile, and easily forgotten in backyards and vacant lots. And they look like personal property, even when thoroughly coated with yellow paint. Arif Khan, the current coordinator of Portland's Yellow Bike Project, says that community bike projects require a shift in public consciousness -- from private to community "ownership," from consuming to using.

"Perhaps we should adapt a more American version of a community bike program, with controlled sign-out and deposit points," mused Owen Robinson, the Eagle Scout who created an orange bike program in Syracuse that went the way of Portland's original efforts. "The spirit wouldn't be the same, but maybe we've asked too much of the honor system." Indeed, some of the free bike projects originally thwarted by thieves have been reinvented in a slightly less idealistic vein.

In Minneapolis and Saint Paul, for example, the bikes are now checked out from hubs -- bookstores and natural foods stores, mostly -- where riders sign a waiver (freeing the Yellow Bike Coalition from liability) and put down a $10 refundable deposit in exchange for a Yellow Bike Card and a key. Copenhagen's white bikes work similarly: the 1,800 specially designed bikes can be checked out from shelters around the city for a small deposit. Police issue a citation to anyone who takes a white bike outside the limits of the city center. In small, limited environments, like a Dutch national park and Lawrence Livermore Labs near San Francisco, free bikes work. Sprawling cities make oversight and maintenance much more difficult. Free community bike programs aren't truly free; they require money and time to keep the bikes ridable and available.

Despite all this, Portland's program has been resurrected. This time the organizers are expecting thieves, but they are also taking steps to discourage them; many of the new bikes have welded parts and women's frames -- the theory being that most thieves are men who would rather not be seen riding a girlish bike. The program is well on its way to reaching a critical mass of new bikes, a number which the organizers hope will keep the bikes visible and useful in the city, even after the thieves have taken their toll. The Community Cycling Center, which teaches bicycle safety and repair to kids, oversees the maintenance of the bikes. More volunteers working on the project means more guardians for the bikes and greater community involvement. The Yellow Bike Project, like other community bike programs, may turn out to be an experiment not only in trust, but in adapting an urban commons on wheels to a culture short on trust.