Bike Sharing + iPod = Cool Money

Commuters weary of stuffy journeys aboard buses and subways have a better way to get to work, buy groceries and meet for a Saturday matinee. Bike-sharing programs transformed Europeans into two-wheeled travelers. It is a decades-old concep that offers urbanites and tourists low-cost access to bicycles within the inner city to ease traffic congestion, curb pollution and boost physical activity.

Bike sharing, unlike renting, operates on a self-serve model (no attendants) and is geared toward short-term uses. These schemes are already laudable for so many reasons, most notably their benefits for the environment and urban congestion. Making such services more convenient for consumers through maps and the increasingly ubiquitous iPhone is the obvious next step toward realizing those benefits more fully.  Barcelona's two-year-old Bicing is a shining example. Now, bringing the service into the iPhone era, the company recently launched a mobile application that consumers can use to get location-based information about bicycle and parking availability.

Residents of Barcelona use Bicing by applying for a personal card and then using that card to rent and pay for use of one of the service's 6,000 bicycles. Bicycles can be picked up from and returned to any of 400 stations throughout the city. With the new iBicing application—downloadable from Apple's iTunes Store for EUR 0.79—consumers can now see in advance the best place to find or bring back a bicycle. All they need do is send an SMS to "7010" for information about the availability of bikes and parking slots at the stations nearest them. iBicing taps the iPhone's GPS capabilities to pinpoint a user's location and select which stations would be most convenient, but users can also search for information about others. Google Maps with interactive navigation can be displayed as well.