We’ve mentioned our love of bike share in a few videos and our surprise that the Netherlands, one of the most bike-friendly countries in the world, doesn’t have this seemingly essential service. We learned that a lot of Dutch people are kind of baffled by the concept, so in this video we’re going to make the case for bike share but also consider if there are any reasons it’s less relevant in the Netherlands.
Keep Urbanity rolling:
Join our Patreon for early releases: https://www.patreon.com/ohtheurbanity
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN5CBM1NkqDYAHgS-AbgGHA?sub_confirmation=1
Join us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/OhUrbanity
References:
Bike share study from Vancouver: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211335519301202
Toronto bike share subsidy: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2022/pa/bgrd/backgroundfile-229023.pdf
Amsterdam bike theft study: https://news.mit.edu/2023/where-do-stolen-bikes-go-0215
Bike parking regulations: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/parking-your-bike-at-home/
OV-Fiets as last-mile solution: https://mal-verkosto.fi/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Peter-van-de-Pol-OV-fiets-bike-sharing-system-Asemanseutufoorumi2020.pdf
Study on OV-Fiets users: http://essay.utwente.nl/93399/1/Pluister%20B.%201718150%20_openbaar.pdf
48 Comments
I live in the Netherlands and I do see some use cases for bike share 🙂 Especially now we have a newborn who I can't yet safely transport on my city bike, after dropping her off at daycare it would be useful to grab a bike there. And sometimes taking a bike to a store and then public transit back with the unwieldy things I bought would also be nice.
However, I do also have some issues with bike share from my experience with it in North America and London. I'm not so worried about not finding a bike, but we had a few situations where the destination parking was full. Especially if you have to pay once your time frame is up it made it sort of stressful to find another dock, not to mention you had to move away from where you wanted to go to do so. They are less comfortable than my own bikes and sometimes the docking stations would error. Of course all of these problems are relatively minor.
But I actually think one of the bigger issues with implementation of these in the Netherlands is that the potential scale of users is so big that it might become unmanageable. Imagine a few thousand cyclists arriving at a train station and all wanting to use the bike share from there to the office buildings.
For this reason, you're also not allowed to take your bike on buses in the Netherlands. It would be helpful, yes, but it would disrupt the service too much with how many cyclists there are. You could of course invest enormously in bike share to make it work on a huge scale, but this type of investment would do a lot more good in public transport, IMO.
I totally agree on the OV-fiets for foreigners, by the way! It's wrong to exclude people based on their address and it would be very useful for quite a lot of visitors. But of course, foreign visitors don't typically have representation in government…
Hi, I'm Dutch, and when I first started this video, I must say, I was quite sceptical about the practicality of a bikeshare system for the Netherlands. Now, however, I think you're right and we are missing out. It is a better solution to the last mile problem than the OV-fiets (I've often had to pick people up from the station because 5 euros for a trip from the station to my home and back seems a bit steep). I would mainly use it in other cities than my own, since I already own a bike (which on a per-month basis is still way cheaper than bikeshare, for a bigger upfront cost and the need to store and maintain it yourself). I think it would also lower the need for owning multiple bikes, like carshare services are lowering the need to own a (second) car. Also, I think that you're right on the OV-fiets being available to foreigners. It's a crying shame that it is so hard to obtain an OV-chipkaart. Now, we're making people get throwaway tickets and they cant use the OV-fiets bike rental system. Just make generic cards and slap on a big deposit, to be returned when the card is. The Netherlands still have a lot of opportunities to expand our public transit services. Thank you for your videos!
The thing is we had bike sharing here in Zwolle.. you don't even need to drop it in a station. You can drop it anywhere (that had problems ofcourse). But they kind of all got broke or retracted their offer here. It just doesn't work here, they can't make money from it. The only thing we still have here is scooters. Those seem to work here until now.
We have several bike share systems in The Netherlands, here in Utrecht it's Tier.
You should know that the Dutch invented bikeshare in 1965!!! just look up the wittefietsenplan by Luud Schimmelpennink. He also invented Witkar, these were smal electric cars share cars. So I would say… Been there, done that,… but got back on our own bikes.
We do still have a good working bikeshare system, the owners just dont know that they are sharing their bikes 🤪
I live in Amsterdam and you’re underestimating how cheap bikes are here that are high quality, I’d say 90% of people I know spend less than 100 euro on a bike. Bike theft is only an issue if you spend a lot on your bike, and people who do tend to insure that problem away. I have lived here six years and park my bike quite carelessly to be honest and I’ve never had my bike stolen.
So for me it’s a 90 euro bike, I’ve spent 40 euro of repairs on over six years. Yeah, sorry, you’re just extremely wrong about this lol
ok big comment incoming from a Dutch persons perspective.
to explane the points made for bike share and how they don't really hold up in The Netherlands, and that's why we don't see the usefulness/attractiveness of bike share services
1. most Dutch people have a bike dedicated for those routine trips, like buying a few days worth of groceries. so why pay for a subscription if you already have it at home.
2. in the example of going out after work. aside from the fact a lot of Dutch people aren't that he lets do this tonight, we like to plan it a bit in advance and change clotches between work and going out.
if such an occasion would occur the people that arrived by bicycle just leave the bike stalled in the bike parking offered at work (because yes almost all work places have a place on side to stall your bike) and one of the co-workers will give them a ride home after going out or you just take public transport from the bar to you home. and the next time you go to work you either go by public transport and have your bike waiting at work for you, or one of your co-workers gives you a ride to work.
3. we don't have the problem of places of interest (like a library) being far from either your home or a transit stop. in The Netherlands they tend to have stops close to places of interest because those are places people want to visit (by public transport). so it's only logical to have a stop close by
4. about the rain. either we dress to prepare for the rain, or we don't care about getting a (little) wet because we're Dutchies we have rain a lot.
we also have great weather apps to show us when it will rain and if we have the time between (rain) showers to do our tasks.
5. storing a bike at home. we have a law that every residential place has to be build with a dedicated space where people can store a bike. so almost every home has either a (stone) shed at the end of the (back) garden, a little building in front of the house or an room next to the front door with space to store several bikes in.
apartment buildings often have a place on the ground floor meant for either communal or individual bike storing (and it's locked so only residents have access)
6. yes to us Dutchies those bike share docks are ugly, we rather use that space for greenery/trees. instead of having a service that not isn't really wanted by us.
so for us Dutchies those bike share services are really not wanted/necessary.
but i totally get that there are a lot of places where they are useful and really add something.
I'm Dutch and have used bikeshare systems in places like Berlin, Salt Lake City, Stockholm and especially Łódź (Poland), since I was there the most.
What really hit home was the freedom it gave: not having to remember where you parked your bike and being constantly aware that you have to get back to that location to pick it up again. Such liberation!
I kinda disagree that bike theft is a huge problem in the Netherlands. Yeah, lots of bikes get stolen, but that's considered so normal that you don't even mind much anymore, at least in big cities.
Mostly whenever mine gets stolen, I buy a cheap secondhand bike off of Marktplaats (eBay) or sometimes from the local junkie bike dealer. People often enough buy their own bikes back from homeless people and junkies, that's just the circle of life here. If your bike got stolen, the way I see it, it was your own fault, or it was meant to happen.
And if you're one of those people who buy a 4000 euro E-bike for flexing purposes, you deserve to have it stolen 😛
So i've to drive my own bike to a bike-rental to rent one, hmmm idk? 🤔
Being tottaly honest bike shares are for tourist
I don't like the notion of riding a cookie-cutter type bike. Maybe for very short trips, but if I'm going to be riding a bike for more than an hour, I want it to be my own that fits my particular needs.
We would nick these bikes for sure 😀
You are a bit arrogant to think you have much insights to add indeed. Dutch bikes have been practically maintenance free since the 1920's. We don't buy flimsy bikes with exposed chain and gears then to need to hire a rental bike for when it rains.
We are also quite punctual, a share bike being 5 or 10 minute walk away is an issue. With your own bike there you can plan better.
Your own bike rides as expected, it fits well, you can carry stuff on it.
I like to leave my phone at home sometimes, and I don't like to share where I go with some data company.
I don't like the way companies like these treat public space, and the way the people using them care for stuff that is not theirs.
Folding a bike is too much hassle, tram rides are not worth the effor usually because too short, might as well right on. They don't ride nice either. For a train trip it's worth it, but OV-fiets covers that and is far more convienent. We don't like all these bikes on trains either.
OV-fiets isn't expensive. It's an ignorable amount of money when it's occasional, as is usually the case. Otherwise you get yourself a 'stationsfiets', a bike you buy to park at the station. With OV fiets you have a bike at your disposal a long as you are on that side of the train trip and you can count on it.
So no, I really can't see there being enough demand for it to have a dense enough network to make it remotely practical here. OV fiets really covers 95% of the possible demand for a rental.
I would have loved to use a bike share service when I was in Amsterdam. Having to go to a certain location to return my bike rental was a hassle.
Lol are you guys in the pocket of Big Bikeshare or something?
Anyway, we actually do have bikeshare in the Netherlands, except it's dockless e-bikes and scooters by Go and Felyx. That seems to have caught on somewhat. Honestly, between that, OV-fiets, and almost everyone having their own bike, the market is too saturated to justify municipalities investing in bikeshare programs. Remember that municipalities have to pay for it out of our tax money, and most municipalities are already struggling financially as it stands. I don't think a proposal to start a bikeshare wouldn't make it through city hall anywhere for this reason. The question would be, "what for, what problem does it solve?" and the answer is that the number of cases where it would truly solve a problem is too small, considering all the other stuff that's available.
2:36 I hate people that just don't care.
Here in Lisbon we have a similar feature, but then you pay a fortune.
What you are missing here, is that the Netherlands already tried bikesharing back in the 60's and even tried it a couple of times after that, it just doesn't work. Riding a bike is so integrated in the culture that renting a bike for Dutch people does not make sense.
Also everyone needs it at the same time (rush hour) so the bike rental plan is nice for occasional use, but not for daily commute like the Dutch do. If it were, there would have been a service like that in place for decades now.
https://nl-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Wittefietsenplan?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=de&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
I feel like it'd be best to have the personal discipline to just have your own bike. Costs way less too. I bought my bike used for 20$ and it's been good for years so far.
Bikeshare is just you paying some company to take care of your bike for you, and I'd rather do that myself for free. I already can't afford a phone bill as it is.
If your vehicle can only transport one person at a time, it should only have one owner. Bikeshare just adds complication for everday use. It should only be used when visiting a city that isn't your home.
We used to have a few bike share options in Amsterdam, around 6 years ago. It resulted in abandoned bikes everywhere. The municipality has stopped these bike sharing experiments after about 6 months.
I love the channel but have to ask if the narration is AI or just robotic sounding humans/
I wonder if a registration system for all bike parts, seat, wheel, frame, etc., would help with theft. Maybe interlocking methods or better locks between the bike components, such as an integral lock between the seat and frame, would be a good enough deterrent for bad actors.
I always worry about capacity with bike sharing. You don't really know how many bikes might be available nearest to you (you might check apps, but again once you check the app you can see what's available or not), and there might not be socket capacity for when you need to drop your bike off. You might be able to manage this as a user by using apps and looking ahead for where to drop your bike off and then walk the rest of the way, but that's an additional variable to consider.
I'm tall too so the one size fits all approach to these models might not work for me, especially if I'm approaching those 45 minute boundaries.
I think bike sharing still has a purpose, even for someone like me. It's all about redundancy and resilience. If my bike is in the shop for maintenance, then I'd still like to have mobility during the outage. I could buy another bike, but that's a hassle because it's another piece of equipment I'll need to keep up on. And since I wouldn't be riding that one every day, I'd need to do more planning to make sure the spare would be in good working order before the outage. Bike sharing would be a stress reliever for these kinds of situations.
Spontaneity is also a perk with these services where you could pick up a bike nearby for meeting up somewhere with friends or whatever. When you bring your bike you have to plan to have it with you all day, and have to manage possession.
Despite all of this, I still think there's a place for this service in most urban communities. Those that the service doesn't really serve them well might still benefit from it from time to time.
Great video!
I would say that maintance is one of main arguments for using bike share in the Netherlands, after intial purchase cost maintance is the highest burden to keep my bike in good order in the Netherlands. The theft argument is a horrible one, comparing bike theft in Amsterdam to other places in the Netherlands should make that quite clear. Every city has its problems but once u leave the 'Randstad' (metropolital area between Rotterdam – Amsterdam and Utrecht) this problem wanes quite considerably.
At 10 euro's a month I would suppose that a portion of bike riders in the Netherlands could be incentivised to move to bike share although I dont see it cathing on. Its not part of the culture at this point and it has some inconveniences that u just dont have with your own bike.
Lastly I think the possibility of bike share is certainly there but if private companies dont spring up here (in the Netherlands) where the infrastructure is most accomadating then we should ask why. I suppose there is an argument for bike share to solve the 'last mile problem' but Dutch people usually just get a seperate bike if they make that commute/trip regularly.
7:50 tripped me out a bit, I was like why are there Bixis in the EU?
I live in Chicago with a Brompton and a Divvy membership. I find it's the perfect combo. I use my Brompton for recreation, grocery shopping, getting around the neighborhood, and going to activities where I know I can bring it right inside.
When I'm going out to spend time in the greater part of the city, a mix of Divvy and public transit is the perfect match. I can ride the train there so i don't get sweaty, then ride home for a bit of exercise and to spend some more time outdoors. It is also a great option for live events and theaters where I cannot bring my Brompton inside and definitely would not want to leave it, or any bike, locked up outdoors unsupervised for hours. The ease of bike share works great for going to a movie or concert.
The flexibility to pickup a bike almost anywhere and drop it off almost anywhere else opens up so many options in the moment that you just wouldn't think of. It's kind of like "Now you're thinking with portals" but "Now you're thinking with bike share."
A bike share scheme just started in Leeds uk, 4th biggest city, its small programme and has just not gone well, constant failures on the app, the irl physical issues with locking and fines, never any available bikes besides at train station. The have these extremely pricy passes for a very limited network, 60min in one is £9, 'Flexi Pass' the 'best' gives you zero charge fee to unlock a bike which is normally £1, and gives you 300 mins for 30 days at £32, which kinda works well but nearly always there is never a bike available that is not the train station which people don't live at so you can use it for anytrip that is not from the train station, let alone the semi-common £10 fines for docking the bike outside a dock , which occur even if you dock it correctly for a lot of people so you spend time with support fighting that you did infact lock it correctly or locked it at a point. Would not be surprised if these 'growing pains' kill the multi-million programme and once the state money allocated for it runs out so does the private companies scheme. Fucking leaches the private companies.
Simple reason: we Dutch are used to have our bike with us everywhere. Like bringing a bag. When you use a bus or car to go into the center, you also never need a bike, because the centers are small and walkable. I hated the use rental bikes in London: empty racks at the start, full racks on return; took so much time. Theft is strongly reduced with many (new) free indoor parkings in most city centers and all railway stations.
The Dutch accusing others of arrogance is about as peak hypocrisy as it gets lol
It is not exactly bike share, but in Amsterdam (at least) you can get Swapfiets, recognisable by the blue front tires. I think that mostly students and expats, and other people who do not plan on a permanent stay here, use it. You pay a monthly fee for use of one bike, but the benefit is that the bike is quickly replaced if damaged or stolen and if you have to leave the city, you don't have a bike you need to take with you or otherwise get rid of.
For actual bike share, OV fiets really does fill the niche. We have a pretty good (if expensive) public transport so the optimal use case is you use your own bike to go the train or (major) bus station, then at the destination station use the OV fiets to go the final destination, and return.
From the Netherlands here, and I do think you have a few great points, they should lower the OV fiets price, and more bike sharing would mean less parking spots are needed. We do have 'Swapfiets' and it is popular amongst locals, but it is rather your own bike and the service just provides it is serviced or swapped when it is broken. Also, the government provides the 'Fietsplan' to many employees, which is a budget of say 750 euro to buy a bike, and every three years iirc you can get another Fietsplan. And yeah, I have had friends over from abroad who would have loved an OV fiets as well.
Our mindset is all on owning the bikes ourselves and maintain it ourselves.
While there is indeed a rent bike system in The Netherlands, its not really that much relevant since most people here own a bike themselves.
I don´t think we are missing out that much.
Bike Rental done in Canada seems to be a different way of success then The Netherlands, and that should be celebrated.
Not everything can work in each country for the sake of improvements, Canada has yet to reach cycling to a level where Denmark is right now.
A rental bike service is a good start, but not much if the bike lane ends up somewhere abruptly.
The main difference is that with bike-sharing you will not have the bike at home when you want to go somewhere else. You also need to drop it of at perhaps places where you do not want to go. So you still have to go from and to the bike-share location and your destination/origination point. As you said, you already have bikes. So what you are talking about is like having car-sharing instead of a second car. It is an addition, not a replacement.
So when would Dutch people need that bike sharing? If they go to a different town. But that most likely means they need to go back. So that is when you can pick up your bike at the train station. And if not, there is also good public transport available, so a bike is not even needed on those few occasions when you are in a different city. Will it be useless? No, but most likely not financial interesting enough. It might be for Amsterdam for the tourists, but not so much for people living there.
e.g. I do car sharing that I can do in several cities in Europe, but I only do it at home. In another city I just use public transport. I will be there on a vacations most likely and that way I can have a beer or a glass of wine whenever I want to. And I will pick my stay near public transport or that I do not even need public transport.
What do you mean the Netherlands doesn't have this? We do. We have OV fiets which seems to be the only kind of shared bike system that doesn't get tossed into the river/canals as it's tied to your public transport card and you're held liable for keeping the bike safe. Other rental bike, or moped services exist, but aren't quite as popular as the maintenance cost is very high due to the lack of respect for rental vehicles.
Wittefietsenplan (White bicycle plan) was a bike sharing plan from the 60’s. The concept is not uncommon to the Dutch, but like a lot of weesfietsen, they end up being stolen or abandoned, usually dumped in the canals.
So it's easier to own a bike and with the infrastructure we have, public transit is only a luxury for those who don't have the time to cycle 50 miles.
You forgot biking to a party, getting hammered, then uber/transit back home.
Search: Wittefietsenplan . The Netherlands had share biking in 1965 for free!
I'd like to point out that aside from the white bicycles in Park De Hoge Veluwe, we do actually have bike share in the form of Bolt bicycles. They just don't use those racks that still force you to a fixed location on both ends of your trip. They're just like CheckRides or Felyx scooter-share. You get an app, use the app to unlock whatever Bolt bicycle you've found somewhere and then you leave it where ever you're done with it.
The problem with that kind of system is that there will never be enough bicycles in a central location when people want them. I see people who work for NXP using those green Bolt bicycles all the time, but I've also seen people who work for NXP curse and swear at the fact that the bike they left this morning, was not there any more at the end of their shift. And that's something I personally would not be able to deal with. If that bike share is to be a part of my commute, it needs to be dead reliable. It needs to be as reliable as owning my own bike.
OV-Fiets, especially if it's included in your NS Business Card, is much more reliable than Bolt bicycles. Because it's YOUR bike for the day. You have the key and you don't have to worry that the bike might be gone at the end of the day. You know for sure that you're getting back to the station, back to the train that will take you home with little to no hassle.
For me the big downside of a DIXI style bike share is that it will take me from bike rack to bike rack. It doesn't actually take me to my destination, unless that destination happens to be next to a DIXI bike rack. So it's barely more convenient than taking a bus.
We have so many forms of bike rental or bike sharing already, why would we need yet another one? Especially one that takes up a huge amount of space that then is unavailable to personal bicycles?
If you want a bike for a random ride through the city and you don't care if someone else will have hired it when you get back, most major cities have those green Bolt bicycles.
If you want a bike for your last mile commute or the last mile of going to visit someone, then OV-Fiets generally has you covered, as you probably arrived by train to begin with. So you're going to want to go back by train again, so having to return the bike to the station is a non-issue.
If you want to hire a bike so you don't have to deal with maintenance or theft or anything like that, get yourself a Swapfiets or whatever their competitors are called. You pay a fixed fee monthly, if anything is wrong with the bike, you can call them and someone will come to your location to sort it out. Bike stolen? They will bring you a new one. Flat tyre? Someone will come fix it for you.
Me personally, I'd never use any of those services. My disability prevents me from riding a bicycle and moped rentals, apart from Felyx or CheckRides are not really a thing. But those services are insanely expensive. It costs 1 euro to unlock them and 33ct/minute that you're riding it. And there is no guarantee that if you pick up one of those mopeds that it'll have a full charge in the battery, so it might not make it to where you want to go, and there is no guarantee that the scooter will still be there when you want to use it again.
Dutch person here: Bikeshare (and more commonly: Scooter share) actually does exist in many places, sometimes even by multiple providers but they tend to get relatively lightly used and the bikes end up absolutely everywhere they shouldn't be half of the time. Except if you're in a place you don't normally go too with unreasonably poor public transportation (Yes, we do have transport deserts here), they're basically never necessary because everyone who does need them for first/last mile transit, pretty much always already has a bike and because of how common (and cheap) just setting up a trasher bike at your place of destination is, they're rarely needed for that too.
The only real situation where I've seen the hype about bikeshare actually emulated here is when public transport companies want to cut cost and they try to present bikeshare as an alternative for passengers who simply lose their connection. It generally doesn't work (even though a few benefit, most passengers just stay away) and provides no actual alternative for the people most reliant on public transport who often either can't handle the extra costs and/or just can't consistently cycle safely to begin with.
Given the above, I've got mixed feelings about bikeshare systems. – Especially due to the way they're often used as an argument to destroy public transport under the guise of "increasing mobility".
Great video!
10 a month is pretty expensive, I would expect something like 30 a year unless there are electric bikes
I have 3 different standard type bikes to get me around Denver. Even with them, I’d still be willing to pay up to $20/mo for reliable bicycles I can do a one-way trip on, such as when I fly, shortening my initial trip by 30 minutes in the morning, bicycling to get groceries & then using transit to get home with full bags (I have panniers & use them too), or getting to a location too far to walk from transit where I don’t need my bike otherwise. We had a municipal bike share in Denver until the pandemic but deferred maintenance accumulated & costs were unattractive. We now have bike & scooter share companies but they charge an activation fee & per minute fee for use so a 2-mile journey can be $5-9 easily!
I have used a bike ride system abroad and there where 2 things I disliked:
1. The bikes themselves, the saddle was mediocre at best and it couldn't go up high enough. This combined with fixed handlebars, lead to an uncomfortable sitting position.
2. Availability A couple ofbtimes I had to walk quite a bit to find an available bike.
3. Infrastructure that did not really take biking into account.
When I try to imagine how I would use this in The Netherlands, I just don't see why I would use it. I have used an ov-fiets twice in my life, so maybe I am not the intended audience .
San Francisco's Baywheels system currently removes the e-bike fee if you undock from a dock that has no "classic" bikes listed. Once I learned about this secret discount, I started using the e-bikes more often, opportunistically. I suspect that they're actually transitioning out the classics as time goes on because other parts of the bike fail much more often than the battery. So the effect I'm feeling is that as I continue using the service more and paying my modest $169/year membership, I am getting more mobility: the number of stations expand, the city makes more moves towards cycling infrastructure, and the bikes themselves go faster(which I don't always want, but it is a pleasure to feel them accelerate). I don't feel this same effect with a transit pass, because transit isn't adding capacity in this way, at this rate. While it's easy to end up paying more with a bikeshare by ignoring the per-minute fee, it's also not hard to use it and only pay the base cost. If I bought an e-bike instead, I'd be paying for something like 10 years of membership, plus maintenance costs, risk of theft, etc.
I don't think the Netherlands is positioned in the same way, since the networks and bicycle fleets are already there; the appeal would most likely come from seeing the bikeshare as a convenient way to "upgrade" to e-bike.
You still need to pick up the bike from the rack(if it is not close) and bring it to another rack when finished. A lot of students have one bike for the ride to the train station and one for the ride to the end point (like college) even some commuters have that. Theft is not really an issue if your bike isn't new, so a lot of bikes look like crap but still work perfectly. Also most people can do the simple maintenance or know someone in the family who can. And used bikes are really cheap…. Cheaper than your 'cheap service ' for a year…
I think the main problem is that transit to work is mainly one-way two times a day. Thousands go left and nobody is going right kinda thing. Bike share works with circulation and on work days there isn't (hardly) any. We should have mixed workspace and living space up more but we didn't.
Our city took the bike share out 😢
As a Montrealer I can tell you that bike share is a scam: they take way to much space and often, we have a hard time finding parking space for normal bikes. The Dutch, they don't pretend to be a biking nation, they are one. Montrealers take the bike sharing to go down the hill, downtown. They call a Uber when it's time to go uphill…