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Witness History: The first bicycle-sharing scheme

Documentaries

The first bicycle-sharing scheme

18/01/2022 GMT

BBC World Service - Witness History, The first bicycle-sharing scheme

How a Dutch engineer invented a scheme to share bikes and cut pollution in the 1960s.

In the mid 1960s a Dutch engineer called Luud Schimmelpennink came up with a scheme to share bikes and cut pollution.

In the mid-1960s a Dutch engineer called Luud Schimmelpennink came up with a scheme to share bikes, and cut pollution. He collected about ten old bicycles, painted them white and left them at different points around Amsterdam. The first scheme didn't last, but it was hugely influential and became part of popular culture; Luud Schimmelpennink himself would go on to invent an early computerised sharing scheme for cars, and to consult on the bike-sharing schemes we see around the world today. In 2019, he spoke to Janet Ball.

Photo: Activists with one of the original white bikes from the first scheme. Credit: Luud Schimmelpennink.

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