As more cities take cycling seriously, particularly with growth of bikesharing, they are designing infrastructure to serve all ages and abilities – or, as Gil Penalosa phrases it, everyone from 8 to 80 years old.  Creativity and experience are resulting in all kinds of new designs. 

Here’s some of the good news from The New York Times:

Bike Sharing Can Mean Safer Biking

Transportation departments across the United States have begun to respond with creative improvements for safer roadways.

The National Association of City Transportation Officials has developed an exhaustive urban bikeway design guide based on a worldwide literature review, experiences from its 22 member cities and collaboration with traffic engineers, city planners and academic researchers. The guide informed new citywide bike safety plans for Seattle and San Francisco.

[Accompanied by a slide show with some of the latest developments.}

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On the other hand (and isn’t there always another hand), early adopters of new ideas and technologies are some of the first to experience the downsides.  Frank Ducote wonders if this emerging problem in Paris has any lessons for Vancouver as it moves forward on bikeshare:

In Paris, Thefts and Vandalism Could Force Bike Share to Shrink

Home to the largest bike-share program outside China, it turns out Paris has been losing its bikes to theft and vandalism. A lot of bikes.

According to figures unearthed by Le Monde last week, 9,000 bikes from Paris’ Vélib‘ bike-share system were damaged or stolen last year. As of this summer, 35 bike stations across the city had been shut down for repairs or due to bike shortages, leaving gaps in availability that can’t be fixed even by the usual daily redistribution of bicycles back to outlying stations.

The costs incurred by this wave of theft and vandalism are huge. A new bike costs €650, while repairs to damaged or vandalized bikes cost €450 on average. The Paris City Hall official responsible for monitoring the scheme reckons thefts and repairs cost €1 million last year. …

… the huge losses are causing a rethink of the scheme’s scope. While remaining one of the world’s largest bike-sharing programs, City Hall estimates that the ideal number of bikes should be a slightly smaller 18,000, more than are currently in circulation, but less than its ambitious initial targets. This will inevitably mean decommissioning some stations, shrinking the scheme’s ambitions but possibly making it more viable.