My friend, Colin Whooten, responds to my previous post on bike sharing: It helps that China is essentially a dictatorship, no? It’s brilliantly efficient if the leaders make good decisions. It’s awful otherwise. I’ll choose 3 years to get a bike share program and being able to talk about this openly on a social media site vs. living in fear at even thinking of questioning anything (like if I didn’t like bikes and would rather the government spent money on something else). Colin brings up a valid point: less democratic governments can generally get things done quickly at the expense of, well, democracy. I agree with everything he says in principle, and would not trade China’s government for ours, but

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Bike sharing programs have been popping up in major cities all over the world throughout the past few years, and for good reason. When thoughtfully designed, they’re really a brilliant idea. For those who are unfamiliar, these programs establish bike stations in dozens of locations throughout a city allowing city residents and visitors to rent a bike using a credit card or membership pass from a automated machine. Once rented, a bike is unlocked from the station, and the user is free to ride the bike anywhere in the city, and then return it to any other station. There’s no worrying about locking the bike up, or bringing it back to the initial rental location – it’s really a carefree,

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