John Madsen travels by train to Copenhagen several times each week for meetings with clients and governmant bureaus. Typically, he will hail a taxi after arriving in Copenhagen to get to the first of his appointments which are usually located in the city center, only a short trip by car from the station.
One day, while he is riding on the train, reviewing the day's agenda, he looks up and sees an advertisement for the Kø share. This strikes him as a good alternative to spending company funds being ferried around in an automobile and he knows it would please his wife, who is constantly nagging him about his slight weight problem. Deciding to give cycling a try, he logs onto the Kø website on his laptop computer and easily registers as a user of the bike share system.
Upon arriving at the train depot, he makes his way to the densest bicycle storage system ever concived, the Kø Silo, to retrieve the bike he reserved not an hour earlier. The process is alarmingly simple; he passes his company credit card over the integrated RFID card reader at the silo's kiosk and within seconds, out comes a bike through the small doors at its front. He notices that the bicycle is a large, just as he had specified online given his body type, and marvels at the sleek design and ingenuity of the system.
John can see, through the verdant foliage protruding from the silo's porous exterior, some of the inner-workings of the silo itself. He sees that it is a modular stack of rotating racks where each level can hold up to thirty bicycles positioned vertically in individual carrels. As he passes his credit card over the reader at the kiosk, the internal network identifies which bicycle John reserved and rotates it into position above him where a massive chain engages that bicycle's rack and lowers it gently down to him at ground level.
After removing his new Kø bike from the carrel, the silo retracts it and the doors close, ready for another user to call on a bike or return one they had been using.
During his day, he makes many short stops between meetings, lunch, more meetings, and finally a quick stop at the National Library for a bit of research for an upcoming project. Normally this would constitute a considerable charge to his firm's expense account given the number of taxis required; but today he is traveling by bike, the most economic and ecological mode of transportation aside from walking. At each of his stops, he easily finds a Kø Share bollard where his rented bike can be stowed.
Once again he is intrigued by the simplicity of the tall, blueish-gray steel post with an illuminated top. Once the bike comes in range of the bollard, and he verifies that he is done using it, a signal is sent out to the wheel lock on his bike, causing it to engage. The RFID technology embedded in each element of the Kø Share makes it possible for them to keep track of one another. The silos and bollards communicate directly with each bicycle and provide real-time information for the system to utilize in helping others locate nearby bikes, and for urban planners and architects, such as himself to study where exactly the bikes are being taken most often, as well as places they are not going.
The Kø Share method of tracking bicycles appeals to John because it isn't heavy-handed or paranoid; rather there is merely a watchful eye noting where things are, facilitating reorganization, future infrastructural adjustment, and sociological study.
