Bill Georgaqui tried out Paris’s bike sharing program about a month ago. The West End resident said he’s been walking through that city on his business trips four times a year. He was looking forward to finding out how the city looked from a bike.

He rode around for about a half an hour in the St. Germain area, testing only the streets that had little traffic, since he wasn’t ready to fight the cars on the Boulevard St. Michel. He observed that even Paris’s veteran bikers didn’t ride on the wide, busy streets.

He said it looked as if Paris bike-share program had solved the problems it had at start-up—theft, damage and not enough bikes. He said the program had expanded, and the bikes were in good shape.

Where, he wondered, was Boston’s bike-share program that was announced with great fanfare last fall.

I wondered too, since Christopher Loh, a spokesman in the mayor’s office, told me in October that if they could get the details worked out with Bixi, which runs Montreal’s bike-share program, Boston’s bike-share would start this spring.

Apparently the details haven’t been worked out. “We’re making progress in getting it up and running,” said Nicole Freedman, the former Olympic bike racer who is colloquially known as Boston’s bike czar. “I’m not in a good position to talk about it.”

No one else seems to be either. Shane Jordan, the director of education and outreach at the MassBike, said he didn’t know how things are progressing either.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis’s bike-sharing program, called Nice Ride Minnesota will begin this June with Bixi, said Don Pflaum, a public works spokesman in Minneapolis.

“A lot was funded with federal dollars,” he said. “The city got a special grant in the non-motorized transportation program.”

Pflaum said he knows of bike-sharing programs starting in Marin County, California, Sheboygan, Wisconsin and Columbia, Missouri. Denver B-Cycle, a non-profit group formed with city encouragement, debuts this month. Although there is a lot of interest, San Francisco, Portland, Washington D.C. and New York have had problems getting going with bike share.

While Freedman won’t talk about where things stand with Bixi, she is making progress, albeit slowly, on one front—bike lanes. She said bicycle lanes will be installed on the left hand side of the roadways on Commonwealth Avenue from Arlington Street to Kenmore Square this year. At selected intersections a rectangle will be painted onto the street ahead of the stop line for cars. This rectangle will be a place for bikes to wait safely for the traffic light to turn green. Plans are also in the works to adapt Boylston Street for bikes. After that, she said her department was looking at Charles Street, where one-third of the bicyclists now ride in the wrong direction, Arlington Street, and a host of other downtown streets. Even the busy Rutherford Avenue in Charlestown could be adapted for bikes. The city’s application to install bike lanes on Mass. Ave. was recently squelched by MassDoT.

Her hope has been to provide enough safe lanes—and the bikes themselves—so that ten percent of the travelers in Boston make their moves on bikes. Bill Georgaqui, who now rides only on the Esplanade since he’s afraid of Boston streets, is the kind of person she wants to encourage.

More bikers sounds like a bad idea to the pedestrians who risk getting hit by aggressive bikers. It sounds like tragedy to drivers who fear hitting bikers as scofflaws weave through cars whose drivers can’t see them.

But Freedman maintains that the bikers who will travel in protected lanes and rent the bikes in a bike-share program if it comes to pass are not the aggressive and haughty bikers who are now the only ones who will tackle Boston’s treacherous streets. I think she’s right.

With more bikers, many of whom are like you and me, on the road, peer pressure will help control some of the bad behavior. And if ten percent of those who now drive ditch their cars, we’ll have a little less traffic, making it safer for everyone.

I’m wishing the city well in its negotiations with Bixi. Because without a bike sharing program, we’re not going to get the law-abiding bikers no matter how many lanes we paint on the roadways.