The authorities of large megacities long ago realized the need for the development of bicycle transport in order to somehow cope with the main problems of urbanization: environmental pollution and street traffic jams. And if 15 years ago in the world capitals there were only four bike rentals, now there are thousands of them. In most cases, bike rental stations offer to take or leave a bicycle for a small fee or by subscription. But recently new schemes have appeared that do not require the organization of such parking stations. They have their advantages and disadvantages. The first scheme of public rental of Velib bicycles appeared in Paris in 2007. Only for the first year bike rental was used by 20 million people. Since then, similar schemes have been tested and other world capitals. A new scheme from the Chinese company Ofo - the largest bicycle operator in China - is called the "Bike Uber". Ofo has 3 million daily users in 34 cities in China. The company is represented in 150 cities around the world. Bicycle Ofo can be found anywhere and you can ride it as long as you like, the cost of hire is about a dollar per hour. It's enough to use the application on your smartphone to find the nearest bicycle - and you are sent a four-digit code that unlocks the bicycle lock. Users are encouraged to leave such bicycles near existing bicycle parking lots, but they can be left anywhere. In Europe, the leading bicycle power is the Netherlands, but when the Ofo bicycles appeared on the streets of Amsterdam, they did not have much success. "The city already does not have enough space for bike parking, because most of the townspeople have their own bicycles and they are used to leaving them where they want," notes Eric Tettero, adviser to the Government of the Netherlands on transport policy. - Someone will have to solve this problem. A bicycle is not such a simple and cheap device, and it must be handled with care, and not thrown as it is ". Over the past two centuries, a mechanical bicycle has changed little, but more recently, electric bicycles have appeared on the streets of the cities of the world. In the Netherlands, there is a real boom of such bicycles - there out of every three bikes sold, one is electric. In the Netherlands, 27% of all travel by bus is done on bicycles, and the Dutch pass an average of 1000 km per year.

"For us, a bicycle is the main vehicle for traveling to and from school," says Eric Tettero. The Government of the Netherlands has recently set a target to increase the average distance covered by bicycles for residents of the country in the next 10 years by 20%. To this end, it invests heavily in the creation of 40,000 new places in bicycle parks, as well as in the construction of new bicycles and in the development of a system that will prevent the autopilot devices of future robot cars of the approach of a bicyclist. Source: BBC News.