At our table talk on Monday, we talked a bit about the history of city bike systems in the United States. Unfortunately, while bikes are great for the environment and health, bike systems have failed to ever gain much traction in the United States. Part of this is due to cities being so large and horizontally constructed that a car is just too much of a necessity. Additionally, it is now economically friendly to have a car in most cities, or just use Uber or public transportation.

I enjoy biking when it is nice outside, but I typically use my own bike. I have never actually used a city bike system, but I think it would be an interesting and fun thing to do if I wanted to explore some part of a city on a nice day. I do not think that Cornell is the optimal place to use a bike sharing system for a few reasons. First, the design of the campus would make biking very difficult, as it would be very physically demanding to bike up the slope from west campus to central campus. Additionally, starting as early as October, Ithaca becomes very cold and icy. It would not be safe to bike in icy road conditions. I also think that many people enjoy walking up and down the slope with others for conversational purposes, which would be disallowed by biking. I want to eventually try a bike system one day, just not at Cornell.