Last May the Department of Transportation sponsored Bike to Work Day, and the Rhode Island weather gods responded by sending a cold drizzle. Even when the weather’s nice, it’s only the few and the brave who dare to ride a bike downtown.

But it’s getting better. Thirty years ago the Providence River was paved over, and traffic converged at the bottom of College Hill in a rotary called ‘suicide circle’. Our town was called ‘the armpit of the Northeast’. Now it’s a Venice wannabe. This week I saw a photo in the ProJo of fish in the Providence River. They were right side up. They were fairly big. They actually looked healthy. Who would have thought?

Now if Providence, the town that didn’t get no respect, is looking so good, what do you think might happen to a place that is already cool? Here’s news from Paris—

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe was vilified by motorists for widening sidewalks and replacing car lanes with bike and bus corridors. He’s been accused of trying to eradicate the automobile from the French capital. But the new bike scheme has been so successful that his poll numbers are shooting up.

To use the bikes, riders pay about $7 for an annual membership and leave a credit card deposit of $150 in case the bike is not returned. The first half-hour is free, with a charge of about $1 for each 30 minutes thereafter.

Today there are 10,000 bikes available at 750 locations across the city. Both those numbers will double by the end of this year.

This story was on NPR. I was listening as I was stuck in traffic. The idea of a bike, or even a small car, that you can rent when you need it is not new, but the problems of tracking, accessibility and convenience were obstacles to success. Cheap computers have done a lot to make it easier to organize a program, and in Paris they found that tipping point where the bike program is more convenient than driving. That’s the point that any public transit system needs to reach in order to succeed.

There’s a lot of interest in green transportation. Let’s give a hand to the Mayor and other dignitaries of Providence for getting soaked and cold riding their bikes last May. Providence is a great walking and biking city, built before the auto was invented. The potential just needs to be uncovered, like the river.

The bike idea could work in Rhode Island. How about a small scale trial program, on a college campus like U.R.I. or R.I.C.? We wouldn’t have to admit we stole the idea from the French. We could paint them red, white and blue and call them Freedom Bikes.