Bike Library Concept Exploration

The role of bike libraries in the scheme of sustainable transport and livable cities

Typically, a bike library is a facility where bicycles can be barrowed, rented, purchased, repaired, and/or stored. It usually functions on a membership base for accountability, sustainability, and tracking purposes. Although membership fees and terms vary depending on the clientele base, funding sources, and operation methods, most bike libraries strive to make it as affordable and accessible as possible for the targeted audience.

In the context of transport and city life sustainability, bike libraries play an institutional and infra-structural role. Existence of a bike library as a physical facility contributes to the overall foundation upon which bicycle becomes a popular transportation mode.

In this foundation, we can include the positive attitude of national and local governments towards funding bicycle related projects and bicycle-use related infrastructure and facilities such as bike paths, appropriate road signs, traffic regulations, crosses, under and over passes, parking racks, bicycle stations and libraries.

The importance of institutional backing



The expansion of highways and giving more rooms to motor-vehicle users has proved to be counter productive in addressing traffic problems.

As the figures on Table 1 indicate, nationwide the percentage of commuters who drove to work alone increased from 64.4 % in 1980 to 76.3% in 2000. In 1960, only 2.53% of households owned 3 or more vehicles. This number doubled by 1970 and increased five folds then on, reaching 18.31% by the year 2000 (Table 2). Ironically, the number of persons per household decreased from 3.16% in 1969 to 2.58% in 2001. Although the rate of change in persons per household was minus 18% between 1969 and 2001, the rate of change in vehicles per household during the same period had a plus of 63% (Table 3).

Obviously, in the meantime, car sales and oil consumption have consistently increased and the profit margins of automotive and oil companies have gotten larger. As the Table 1 indicates, the share of public transportation in ridership has dropped from 6.4% in 1980 to 5.2% in 2000. The number of people who walked to thier jobs declined even more drastically. It fell from 5.6% in 1980 to 2.7% in 2000. That is almost 50% decline in two decades.

As summarized in the timeline pages of this site, there has been powerful institutional sponsorhip behind the consistent high rates of private car use since especially the 1950s. Consequently, there has been consistent institutional withdrawal from committing to creating a liveable cities and a balanced and sustainable transportation system by fairly investing in public transportation modes, especially in non-motorized ones.


The report by the European Conference of Ministers of Transport notes, “Bicycle use varies from city to city. While more than 50% of all trips are made by bicycle in some cities, cycling as a means of travel is almost non-existent in others. Behind these variations lie different factors relating to the economy, culture, climate, topology, and policies of different countries” (17).

Of the above-mentioned factors, there is little we can do about climate and topology. However, we have direct impact on the factors of culture, policy, and economy.

Since there is very little natural obstacle to bicycle use in most parts of the U.S., we can say that deliberate efforts to promote bicycle use as an alternative to motorized private vehicles for short and medium length trips is most likely to give positive results in a very short period.

In the Netherlands and Denmark, bicycle use is very popular, 27 and 18 percent receptively. Such high rates of cycling take a great deal of stress off from their national road and highway networks as well as making their cities much more resident friendly.

Table 4 shows the statistics from 19 countries on the modal share of cycling. The popularity of bicycle use in these countries has of course a lot to do with their topographical setting. Both countries are very flat for the most part. It must be added, however, that their national transportation policies and the efforts of local governments and other institutions have also played major roles in making bicycle a popular transport mode.

Here I did not add the climate factor because the general climates of both the Netherlands and Denmark are overridden by the national policy and culture factors. Both countries are located in the northern region of Europe. The year-round average weather in these countries is colder and less cycling friendly than the weather in most parts of the US yet the cycling takes only 0.7 percent of the modal share in the U.S. Even in Oulu, for example, a city of about 120 000 inhabitants, situated close to the Arctic Circle in Finland, cycling still has about 25 % of the modal share for daily trips.

In other words, if the bicycle use is not as popular as it could be in the US, it has a lot to do with the approaches of its government agencies, institutions, and population. The education level in a country, for example, has direct ties with that country’s policies and investments towards education. The more schools, teachers, and funding for them you have, the more people are likely to be have a good education. Similarly, a population’s demand and use of a specific transportation mode greatly depends on the existing policies, facilities, and infrastructures. As I discussed in another section of this website (background to suburbanization and car culture), the prominence of car culture (dependence on and obsession with the automobile) among the Americans was largely a result of push by the automotive and oil industries and their dominance in the political and economic arenas of this country.

It is in this perspective that creating and operating a bicycle library becomes important in attaining sustainability in cities and mass transportation.

It would of course be unrealistic to expect every one of current private car users to switch from their cars to train, subway, tramway, bus or bike rides. However, it is realistic to expect that the presence and activities of a bicycle library on a given location would influence the transport pattern for a portion of that location’s population. Even getting a few hundred more people to put their cars aside and use bicycles on a regular basis would be a significant achievement. It would be a success in terms of increase in bicycle use and decrease in private car use. It would also be an accumulative success in terms of the effect of more people riding bicycles on the traffic pattern and on the attitudes of drivers and residents towards cycling.

We human beings like to copy each other. When the copying behavior reaches a certain point, it is called fashion. Thus, bicycle libraries would play a role in making bicycle use fashionable. Fashion, admittedly, has a connotation of being temporary, seasonal, conditional, etc. In terms of bicycle use, however, once the infrastructure is installed and long and mid-term economic, social, environmental, and health benefits are clearly comprehended by the community, it is most likely that bicycle use would become as permanently fashionable as the desire to stay young, strong, and healthy.

A bike library can fulfill such a function because:
  1. It offers bicycles at very affordable rates, at an accessible location on reasonable terms;
  2. It provides storage facilities in terms of parking and safekeeping;
  3. It offers repair help and inexpensive bicycle parts and tools;
  4. It creates a social environment where riders can interact and form networks;
  5. It becomes an institutional location/address that can be recognized by other entities that have an influence on transportation policies and on the management of public funds.
Bike libraries make bicycle use even more affordable than it is already. This is so for a series of interconnected reasons:
  1. Bike libraries largely rely on volunteers and on the do-it-yourself principle.
  2. People donate bicycles, parts, tools, and money.
  3. Once acquired, equipment is used frequently for a long time and by many users.
  4. Once established and running, bicycles are inexpensive to keep, maintain, and use.

Most bike libraries receive parts and tools as donations from the community. If a bicycle tool is bought with the collective budget, it can last for a long time and be used frequently making the initial cost relative and gradually decreasing. Moreover, since most bike libraries are not commercial entities, the profit margins from services, rentals, and sales are minimal. Thus, whereas a bicycle chain at a retail store might be $20, the same item at your local bike library may cost you half the price.

Besides affordability, a bike library becomes a very accessible facility. The facility needs only a few dedicated staff for management since it is a low-maintenance operation and a group of volunteers can shoulder a large chunk of tasks. It is a membership based operation and membership terms are quite simple and straightforward. Such accessibility makes it even easier for people to ride a bike on a daily basis for utilitarian purposes.

Remembering that bicycles are used for mainly short and medium length trips, the accessibility aspect can be enhanced if the location of the bike library is determined considering the following factors:

  1. The location of majority of users;
  2. The location of most frequented facilities;
  3. The location of mass transit hub in the city; and
  4. The location of downtown area.

Moreover, a bike library would provide access to affordable or free tools, parts, and skills. Repair services would be offered by volunteers or members can fix their own bikes. Workshops on various aspects of bicycle rider-ship can be offered to members.

In a sense, bike libraries function as gathering places for users. Since bicyclers compose a different breed of road users, there is a sense of camaraderie. It is more social and human scale experience of transportation. Although bicycles are single user vehicles, because of their human scale in terms of shape, size, and speed, they do convey an environment of interaction among riders or even pedestrians.

For popular use, however, they must be promoted and protected by legislative acts and served by necessary infrastructure and facilities. Bicycle culture is still way behind the dominating car culture in most places. In order to promote bicycle use and establish bicycle friendly policies, traffic patterns, infrastructure, and facilities, it is important for bicycle users to create an effective network.

Bicycles are cost effective, pollution free, practical, and healthy vehicles. As the figures in Box 1 suggest, even modest levels of cycling can provide enough physical activity to obtain significant health benefits. Getting the health benefits of cycling on a personal level can be achieved by cycling for recreational purposes. In order to get the full array of benefits (from health to environment, from economic to social), however, cycling needs to reach a massive level.

The negative consequences of motor-vehicle use became a global concern because the accumulative effect of huge numbers of individual uses creates a magnitude of effects that no one is able to escape from. “The U.S. transportation system (which is composed primarily of cars and trucks) releases nearly 450 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. That is nearly a third of all annual U.S. carbon emissions. The United States contributes more than a third of the annual world total of carbon dioxide emissions – a major greenhouse gas” (Gillham 113). About 40 thousand people are killed every year from traffic accidents (Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey Databook). Moreover, there thousands of additional deaths attributed to pollution caused by the motor-vehicle traffic (Low and Gleeson 120).

The positive consequences of bicycle use, on the other hand, follow the same pattern, too. The massive use of bicycles can be achieved only when bicycles are used for utilitarian purposes; for daily commuting, for making the short and medium trips to various amenities and activities. In the U.S., bicycling is done mostly for social/recreational purposes (Table 5). To transform the bicycle from an occasionally used recreational vehicle to a frequently used utilitarian vehicle requires the installation of inner and inter city infrastructures and facilities.

Bike-lanes, bike-ways, wider shoulders along roads and highways, traffic signs, passages, bridges, parking racks, bicycle stations, changing and refreshment locations etc. make up some of the necessary infrastructure and facilities to make bicycles a popular transportation mode.

In order to construct, implement, and maintain these amenities, the cooperation of local, state, and federal governments is needed (see Figure 1). As noted in the New York City Bicycle Master plan, “Following significant investment in bicycle facilities, cities in industrialized countries have experienced dramatic increases in the level of cycling. For example, Copenhagen experienced a cycling increase of 50% in five years; Eugene, Oregon experienced an increase of 75%; and Toronto experienced an increase of 270%.” (6)


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