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Give me two minutes to consider bike share on this blustery winter day.

It’s worth it. Because I’m betting this will finally come to Edmonton this year and make a bigger difference than one might think.

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This isn’t for that mythical fanatic who bikes through a blizzard. It’s for the rest of us.

It’s for the 40-year-old woman who hasn’t ridden in decades but wants to try using LRT and cycling to the Old Strathcona Farmers Market. It’s for the businessman who wants to zip across downtown for lunch on a sunny day; for the conference-going tourist who wants to check out Whyte Avenue or the river valley on a free afternoon.

Cheap, easy, bike share can make the millions Edmonton invested in bikes lanes a benefit to the masses — people who don’t want to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to buy their own bike. That, in turn, could shift public opinion, at least a little bit, to support various transportation options.

It could happen this summer, at no cost to the city, if officials move on it. Council’s urban planning committee is scheduled to debate it Jan. 15.

Three-season bike share is not incredibly new or difficult. Short-term bike rental programs used to cost cities millions in infrastructure for the heavy locking and tracking mechanism. Now it doesn’t. The new generation of bikes are inexpensive and privately-funded. They use lightweight GPS systems to track the bikes, an app to unlock, and can be programmed to require users to leave bikes only in designated parking havens.

They can even include incentives for neatness — financially rewarding users who move wayward bikes to the right parking spot. They can be stored for the winter.

Cycling activists say three bike share companies have already visited Edmonton, offering to set something up. All Edmonton needs to do is write the rules. It seems easy, a no brainer. And Edmonton is now the largest Canadian city not to have it.