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Montreal's Public Bikes To Use Web, RFID, Solar
Ian Lamont writes "Montreal is preparing to launch a Web- and RFID-enabled public bike system that allows residents and visitors to rent bicycles at special depots scattered throughout the city. Using a Web site, riders can check out a real-time inventory of available bicycles at the depot locations. At the depots, a solar-powered base station will process credit cards or member cards. The bike docks use RFID, and the system is supposedly easy to install and maintain. A pilot program will launch in September with four bike depots."
There must be some system implemented for preventing the bikes from getting stolen. We have a similar system in Vienna, Austria; when it first started off a couple of years back, the bikes were chained onto bicycle racks and could be unlocked like a shopping trolley with a 2 Euro coin (which would be refunded as soon as the bike was returned to a rack again). However within a couple of weeks virtually all bikes had been stolen and sold in other countries. The system was later reimplemented using credit card verification, and now works quite successfully.
I'm sure the people in charge of this project in Montreal would have looked at examples from other cities where these systems already exist, and deemed this sort of protection necessary, there's no need to get all worked up about it being some huge conspiracy to track citizens around the city, after all, it's mostly used by people enjoying a quiet stroll around the city on a nice day, I doubt much confidential information can be extracted by tracking bikes driving through parks.