Pat's Blog

I must have passed these a few times, but never took the time to go over and see what they were?

A vending machine for bicycles and with English instructions. They’re really quite simple to use.

There are now 4 throughout the Takamatsu City downtown area and the bicycles are stored below ground.

One machine holds around 140 bicycles. Two machines are close to the very center of the city in Hyogo machi
First, we select the size of the bicycle and pay 100 yen into the machine, which gives us a token.

We can then ride around the city for a few hours and return the bicycles along with a 100-yen refund. Nothing could be simpler.



Put the token back into the machine and the 100 is refunded. The initiative is twofold; reduce the number of people driving cars around the city and also to ease the congestion of bicycles often left blocking shops entrances.


My very first impression of Takamatsu was that this was a city that encouraged bicycles and there are thousands and thousands of them being pedaled around each day. This is wonderful and how China used to be until they discovered cars and motorways.
So please remember these machines are for everybody, they’re easy to use and the instructions are also in English.
I’ll be back talking about bicycles again this month. Such a sensible and healthy way to travel.
See you then and happy pedaling.

http://wikitravel.org/en/Takamatsu

http://www.city.takamatsu.kagawa.jp/english/