MEXICO'S BIKE REVOLUTION
It's a quiet Sunday morning on the city's Avenida Reforma. On weekdays
there are tens of thousands of cars here, but today there's not one car.
In 2007. Mexico City closed its main road to cars on Sundays. That was
the first big step towards becoming a bike-friendly city, and three years
later, in 2010, it started a new bike sharing system, the 'EcoBici".
Now, with over 4,000 bikes, 276 cycle stations, and 87.000 users.
Mexico City has one of the most successful bike share systems in the
Americas. Cyclists can take a bike from one cycle station and leave
it at any other station in the city between the hours of 6.00a. m. and
00.30a. m. Users have to be over sixteen and pay 300 pesos by credit or
debit card for a year's use. They don't have to pay anything for the first
forty-five minutes of each journey
Forty-nine-year-old businessman Mateo Reyes likes the scheme.
'I only use my car when I'm too tired to cycle, but I go by bike when the
traffic is bad. And the traffic is almost always bad. But he thinks it will
take some time before cyclists and drivers learn to be happy sharing
Mexico City's roads.
READING
3 A Look at the photo of EcoBici, the bike share system in
Mexico City. Write four questions with how much, how many,
who and where.
1 How much does it cost?
3 Who
?
2 How many
?
4 Where
?
B Read the article. Did you find the answers to your four
questions?
C Are the sentences true (T) or false (F)? Change the false
sentences so that they are true.
1 The Avenida Reforma has no cars on Sunday afternoons.
2 You always take and leave the bicycle in the same place.
3 You can't get an EcoBici bike at 2a. m.
4 It costs nothing for one hour's cycling.
5 Mateo Reyes always uses a bike.
6 Rafael thinks driving a taxi is more difficult now.​