Tel Aviv will soon be joining big cities like Paris, Oslo, Copenhagen, Vienna and Berlin, which offer bicycles for rent throughout the city for a small fee. Encouraging people to cycle must be done wisely if bike-riding is to be transformed from a sport into a real means of transportation. If there are enough of the meter-operated bike-rental stands, and if hooligans' urge to steal and vandalize does not win out, as it did in the past when the city placed chairs along the promenade, this could be refreshing news.

A few months ago, the Tel Aviv municipality conducted a successful experiment in which it operated dozens of bike-rental stands for one day. The great demand encouraged the city's transportation department to continue the project. However, for such a welcome project to succeed, it is not enough to have a few dozen stations and the existing 74 kilometers of bicycle paths. These paths must connect into a route, and the route must lead to central places in town. Additionally, the location of the rental stands must take residents' needs into account. Enough parking places for bikes must also be provided, and special bike lanes should be created in the streets and not only on the sidewalks.

Above all, a culture of consideration is needed for others using the road. The current situation is that bike riders act on the sidewalk as if there were no pedestrians, and drivers act on the road as if there were no bicycles.