Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.
New York City is in the second week of its bike share program, joining other major cities like Boston, London and Mexico City.
Would you want a bike share program for your community?
In the article “Out for a First Spin: City’s Bike Share Program Begins,” Matt Flegenheimer writes about last week’s kickoff for bike sharing in New York.
By midafternoon, the passing flickers of blue were already ubiquitous — negotiating light taxi traffic in the West Village, hurtling through the protected lanes of Midtown, drifting toward the Brooklyn waterfront.
For the first time, under cooperatively clear skies, New Yorkers sat astride the city’s first new wide-scale public transportation in more than 75 years: a fleet of 6,000 bicycles, part of a system known as Citi Bike, scattered across more than 300 stations in Manhattan below 59th Street and parts of Brooklyn.
There were kinks in the system’s early hours. A bike was swiped on Sunday as crews worked at the last minute to fill the stations. A mail delivery snag left as many as 200 members without access to the system. Some tourists dipped credit cards in vain for minutes, unaware that the program was initially open only to annual subscribers.
But Monday’s riders were, by definition, an eager and forgiving cross section: founding members who registered for a yearly pass for $95, allowing them to ride between stations for as long as 45 minutes with no added charge.
Students: Tell us …
Would you want a bike share program for your community? Why?How safe is biking in your neighborhood?Do you think more people would bike to work or the store if bikes were somehow shared?Can you imagine sharing more things with strangers besides bikes, like college textbooks, a prom dress or even a car?
Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.
View the original article here
