About 10 days ago a new bike sharing system was put in place in our city. Today was my first chance to try it. Attempting to use an American Express card to get a bike seemed to completely befuddle the kiosk. If I had looked closer I would have realized they don't take American Express but it would have been nice if the Kiosk software had acted in a sane manor when I tried it.

Swiping a Visa card made it happy. Their fee structure really encourages you to leave the bike at another kiosk rather than trying to lock/leave it some place else. As long as your trips between kiosks are less than 30 minutes you can use the bikes as often as you want all day for $5.00

The website shows you a map of the kiosk locations and how many bikes and open slots are available at each one. The kiosk where I got my bike is right outside our building and there was another one less than 2 blocks from my destination. There's a lot of kiosks but they're concentrated in the middle of the city. There aren't any out in the residential area that I live in.

As I was riding I thought it would be great if the bike themselves could show you a map of where you were and the locations of the nearest kiosks. Technically possible I suppose but wouldn't survive the inevitable vandalism. Anyway, I did discover that there's an iphone/blackberrry/android app called spotcycle that does the same thing. Very Cool!

The bikes themselves are very different from what I'm used to and I felt a little weird riding them because of that. One problem I see is that there's only a small rack on the front for carrying stuff. Shopping with them could be a challenge. Other than that they're very serviceable bikes for shorter distances. Three speed Nexus hubs, fenders, chain/skirt guards and lights.