Cycling Up a Mountain on Donkey-back
Bicycles will win because in the trafficless future of liveable, sustainable cities only a few will afford or want to drive a car every day. Infrastructure will favor the majority, cyclists, and self-driving cars will make streets safer for biking. Bicycles will win, and bike-shares will play a key role as they allow for better modal integration, especially for the rail and bike combination. The venture capital world has finally woken up to the potential of bike-sharing. So far Ofo and Mobike have each raised upwards of $500 million. The remaining 30+ bike-share startups, including the one I’m co-founder of, Donkey Republic, have also collectively raised perhaps another half a billion. The results? In China, 50 million people are regular users on its 10 million shared bikes. The bike-share business, which was not seen as a venture capital case until 2016, grew tenfold in less than a year. The adoption of large-scale bike-share systems is likely to spread to Europe, the US, Latin Am...