A friend recently shared with me an article about giving access to a bike share for those who don’t use banks.
“Bike-share programs have to run on credit cards, or the whole thing would never work. This system, though, comes with a giant hitch: What about all the people who don’t have credit or debit cards? Not just young people, but low-income residents as well. In Washington, about 12.5 percent of all households are “unbanked.””
I’ve been thinking about that problem for a while – the people for whom biking promises the biggest benefits are lower-income areas and their residents. Often those people not only lack access to reliable transit, but they suffer the most from our societies food issues, namely obesity. Certainly, extensive bike share programs can dramatically change their lives, but again, most bike share programs tend to begin in “hipper”, white, areas.
There are two programs, bikes not bombs and bikes for the world that seek to help people in other countries gain access to the life changing bicycle, but I don’t know of anything large-scale that exists here. The bike market in NYC seems to be out of control, a 30 year old bike that has been converted to a fixie (single speed, no coasting) sells at a bike store for $250+, which is ridiculous. Where is the $100 bike and a matching 100% tax credit for purchasing it? I’ve thought that the faith-based community could begin to rally around this as they tend to be central gathering places for lower-income areas.
Can a bike share accomplish this? Could it be a gateway to getting people to buy their own bike? What can be done to make biking in these communities “cool”?
Articles of note
