[sustran] Experimenting Public Bike Sharing In India

[eric britton]

Dear Murali, Sudira, Pradeep and others on your team,

 

Thanks so much for writing and informing us about this great idea.

 

My colleagues at World Streets, India Streets and our informal but not
inefficient  World City Cycle group - www.WorldStreets.org ,
www.IndiaStreets.org, www.worldcitybike.org respectively -- want to
congratulate you all on your excellent concept of seeing how you can design,
pull together and demonstrate a Simple Technology approach to bicycle
sharing in Bangalore. It is my personal view that you are taking the
problem/opportunity from the right end (sadly not all that often the case
with PBS projects), and I am confident that if you work on this carefully
enough something very useful is going to come out of it. 

 

I truly believe that the Simple Technology approach is a great way to get
into this challenge, and in fact some of us have been talking about it in an
Indian context for more than a year now. We have come up with  some ideas on
exactly this topic that we would be pleased to share with you. And there are
also teams  working on this approach in Pune, Mumbai and possibly other
places in your great country. I am sure that if you put your heads together
with all these teams splendid results will follow -- and I want you to know
that our team at India Streets will be more than glad to lend a hand in
getting the word out and drawing this to the attention of the public
authorities and the general public. 

 

We have found that, in addition to all the talking, thinking, and writing
that we do in an attempt to better understand what might be good next steps
in any given case, it is always a good idea to go our onto the streets of
the city and take lots of pictures (and videos) of exactly what is
happening, good, bad and indifferent. As an example, you may have some fun
with a first set of street photographs from around the world that we are
collecting here  and sharing them with all who are interested - you can find
the latest collocations at http://tinyurl.com/ws-slides

 

Finally, here is a thought for you. What if you go out onto the streets of
Bangalore and click, say, one hundred photos of bicycles and bicycle people
on the streets in the city. Including the bike shops and repair and rental
points, including the men sitting on the side of the street who are there to
repair your tires or other mechanical problems you may have. I am sure that
we would all learn a lot about problems, what works, what doesn't, who the
actors are, etc. from these images.

 

With great good luck and all the best for your fine initiative,

 

Eric Britton            +331 7550 3788  .
<mailto:eric.britton at newmobility.org> eric.britton at newmobility.org  .  Skype
newmobility

 

 

 

From: Murali H. R. [mailto:murali at gubbilabs.in] 
Sent: Sunday, 20 March, 2011 08:22
To: eric britton
Cc: Sudhira HS; Pradeep B. V.
Subject: Experimenting Public Bike Sharing In India

 

 Dear Sir,
This is Murali from Bangalore. We have started to work on a Public Bicycle
Sharing System in India at the university of bangalore.

Sir,  We would like to have a quick review /strategy of our work so that we
can get your precious advice and share our ideas with you.

To summarize :
1. We would like to build a platform for bike sharing , so that it can be
used anywhere in the Indian City.
2. Run the experiment on a small scale and resolve all the processes - like
renting/financing/insurance etc.
3. Train/Develop people and help them set up similar things across other
cities.

please do visit our site.
http://www.nammacycle.in/ 

Let us know when we can chat ?

thanks
murali