FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Broward County hopes to become one of the first communities in America to roll out a massive bike-sharing system, setting up bikes along the beaches and downtowns for easy rental by residents and tourists.

The so-called bike "libraries" have been popular for years in Europe -- in Paris, particularly -- but only now are catching on in the United States.

A major bike-sharing program will launch in July in Miami Beach. Denver introduced its system in April. Washington, D.C., has a relatively new bike-sharing program. Systems launch this year in Boston and Minneapolis.

"Bike sharing is definitely in its infancy in the United States," said Bob Burns, president of B-cycle, the firm selected to launch a system in Broward County.

Broward County commissioners will vote this summer on a contract with B-cycle, if negotiations are successful. About 200 bikes would be in place six months later, Burns said. The system would grow to about 500 bikes over five years, according to B-cycle's proposal.

B-cycle would pay for the bikes and system, recouping its investment by selling ads on the bikes, bike baskets and kiosks. Burns said he believes that the system could be sustainable in a place like Broward County, with so many tourists.

Here's how it works:

Tourists and residents alike can use the bicycles. They're locked at bike racks placed along the beach or the downtowns of Broward's beachfront cities, probably starting with Fort Lauderdale and expanding to Hollywood, Pompano Beach, Hillsboro Beach and Deerfield Beach. A bike rider can sign up for a membership in advance, proposed at $45 a year. It would also be available for the week ($25), the day $5), the hour (50 cents for the first half hour, then $3 for each half hour after).

Without a membership, a customer can swipe a debit card and borrow the bike for any amount of time.

When the rider is done, the bike is dropped off and locked at another rack.

Here's how the company describes its system: "B-cycle is a next-gen bike-sharing system. In layman's terms: B-cycles are magic bikes that are there when you want one and gone when you don't. Just swipe your card, grab a bike, and get to where you're going."

The bikes have chips embedded in them in case they're lost or stolen. And riders can look up online later their mileage, the number of calories they burned and how much gasoline they saved by taking a bike.

"We have a different context than Europe does, with our bikeability, which is very different," said Paul DeMaio of MetroBike LLC, a bike-sharing consultancy in Washington, D.C. DeMaio writes a bike-sharing blog, tracking the issue nationally.

"It's changing in the U.S.," DeMaio said. "Cities all across the U.S., big and small, are taking huge strides toward becoming more bike friendly."

The cost per bicycle, for startup, operating and maintenance, can reach $8,500, according to B-cycle's proposal to Broward County.

That would pay for a lot of bicycles that could just be given away. But DeMaio said the point is to create a simple system that would allow drivers to ditch a car.

"It's all about making it easy. If you make it easy, people will use it," he said. "Right now, for the most part, driving is easy, and that's why people do it."