As you may have seen, in Sydney, the council has been busy building roadblocks cycleways along many of the city’s streets to encourage people to use bikes to get around in town.
In New York, they’re about to start testing a new network of social bikes, called SoBi, which you can just pick up from a nearby bike rack and leave at another.
To control the system there’s a SoBi unit which is clamped onto the bike. This contains a GPS unit, a cellular device and lock. You register with the SoBi system, and you can then use your mobile phone to locate a bike.
Having found a bike, you use your mobile phone to unlock the bike, and away you go. If the mobile network is up, of course.