Mundane intermodality: a comparative analysis of bike-renting practices

Abstract

Bike rental systems have been introduced as a sustainable urban mobility alternative. This paper analyses the social practices that emerge as part of these systems. We specifically focus on the interactions and street-level performances at a bike rental station. We argue that the bike-sharing service is a pivotal device that enables its users to transform (to re-configure from pedestrians to cyclists and vice versa), hence creating intermodality. The bike rental system ensures the technical standardization of behaviour while simultaneously revealing differences between those familiar with the system and those who are not. Thus, competences and meanings of the station are not subordinate to materials–they are interdependent, entwined and enacted in and through the practice itself.