
French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/world/europe/31bikes.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=all
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abalashov
I remember from the summer I spent in Innsbruck, Austria (my dad was teaching
on a summer abroad program for American students) in 2003 that there were
hundreds of bikes standing on orderly bike racks or improvisationally leaning
against various structures on nearly every nontrivial street.

The biggest surprise to someone just coming from America is that very few of
them were locked, and it did not seem to be a major concern for anyone. I
remember asking if the bikes commonly get stolen and the responses seemed to
suggest that while nothing is wholly impossible in principle, in practice the
answer was no.

Innsbruck is not a wholly homogenous city, though it is certainly much smaller
than Paris (+/- 100k, all told); there are lots of foreigners, and in
particular, a fair number of Turkish, Yugoslav and miscellaneous immigrants,
many of whom would certainly be characterised as poor and/or working in low-
wage service industry. There's plenty of graffiti, some evidence of other
kinds of vandalism, and other such things.

Yet somehow, the bikes don't seem to get stolen, and nobody has any qualms
about just leaving theirs outside, or in the hallway near their apartment,
etc.

I am not sure what to conclude from this, other than that these things vary
greatly by the prevailing mood of the society.

~~~
wheels
Uhm, yeah, that's certainly not universal in Europe. I had 4 bikes (including
having the locks cut) stolen in 2 years in Berlin before I just gave up.

A lot of people here get cheap old bikes just because they're the least likely
to get stolen (though I had two of those stolen too).

~~~
leif
Bikes get stolen pretty quickly here too, even with the vélib bikes readily
available (and only about 20 euros for a year pass), if you leave them in the
wrong places. A friend of mine's had two stolen in a month because he left
them outside at night.

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bjelkeman-again

      Daily use averages 50,000 to 150,000 trips, depending on the
      season, and the bicycles have proved to be a hit with  
      tourists, who help power the economy.
    
      At least 8,000 bikes have been stolen and 8,000 damaged so
      badly that they had to be replaced — nearly 80 percent of 
      the initial stock, Mr. Asséraf said.
    
      JCDecaux must repair some 1,500 bicycles a day. 
    

It would be interesting to see what the comparable numbers are in Stockholm,
where they have a similar effort running, but I haven't seen a single
vandalised bike.

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjelkeman/2436951384/in/set-721...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjelkeman/2436951384/in/set-72157604696313849/)

~~~
ugh
This article seems oddly focused on France. I also know of similar efforts in
Germany. And I have seen similar bikes in Spain.

It would be much more interesting to get a European perspective.

~~~
felixc
Not just European: Montreal, Canada has this too:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bixi>

Interestingly enough, vandalism seems to be much lower, though still
significant: "...one in five bikes have been damaged and 15% of bike racks are
defective..."

~~~
danielharan
While many bikes are still defective, they have fixed the problem with the
racks that allowed people to steal bikes (and break the rack at the same
time).

------
Tiktaalik
Anyone whose owned a bike knows that maintenance is actually a pretty big deal
(it's not difficult, but you need constant vigilance) and that should have
been a huge warning sign before Paris started putting this plan into action.

Aside from that the vandalism situation compounds the problem. The class
struggle aspect to it in France is interesting. I'm not sure that issue would
be as bad in other regions, but surely vandalism would exist at some level
everywhere.

Personally I would much rather like to see governments seek an actual policy
on bike storage and encourage people to buy their own bikes. As has been
discussed before, in most cities there has been little to no thought put into
where people will store their bikes at home or at work. I think this is a key
driver why many don't see cycling as a sensible option for their commutes.
Until this issue is adequately solved, cycling will be inaccessible to many.

~~~
ugh
I know that in all big cities in Germany bikes are widely used. (We use bikes
to go to places, we don’t go to places to use our bikes :) Many don’t even own
a car. I cannot imagine that the bike infrastructure in Europe is really all
that bad. Such rental services are only a extra. And I have read other
articles that seem to indicate that such services work quite well. Nothing
about the service in France, per se, but about other services.

~~~
Tichy
In Germany the Deutsche Bahn (railways) has bought the provider of such rental
bikes. Not sure if they actually make money or if it is just a prestige
project. But they have existed for several years now.

The bicycles look so special that stealing them is probably not very tempting.
Vandalism might still be a problem, though.

------
trailbraker
Having used the velibs in my visit to Paris last week, I feel that the article
is making the program seem bad on purpose. As a tourist, I found it a
brilliant idea.

Typically, out of about 30 or so bicycles in a station, I usually found about
2 in a bad condition. And they were usually NOT vandalized. It was most often
a punctured tyre, a bent or missing basket or something similar.

The most serious problem that I found was the fact that sometimes all the
docks in the station near your destination would be occupied. I quite liked
the bikes themselves, and found them in some respects innovative, but I can't
imagine that they cost 3500€. To register in the system you use a credit card
from which 150€ is temporarily kept as a guarantee. I can't imagine that the
price of the bike is over an order of magnitude more than that.

I wish my home city (Athens) had a program like that.

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barrkel
Comment on the ground - quoted in the article - is that the scheme is "not a
complete success". But reading the article as a whole, you'd hardly think that
- you'd think it's a complete failure.

~~~
alain94040
Which shows that not every article you read in the press is accurate.

It's easy to use a bunch of misleading statistics, put them out of context,
and paint a situation that sounds much worse than it really is.

What I can say for sure is that I know many people in Paris who love the
program. You must understand that it's a much better alternative than owning a
bike. You can really pick up the bike only on the segment you need them for.
Normally, you move around Paris by metro, but there is often some distance
("the last mile") that a bike can do best. But you certainly wouldn't want to
do your entire trip by bike...

I think the article exaggerates the cost per bike ($3,500) and the 10,000
bikes/day under repair sounds plain bogus. And then there is no accounting for
how long the program has been in place, when they say that 80% of the original
bikes have been damaged.

~~~
barrkel
I've been in Paris a number of times and used the system; the biggest issue
I've had was finding a bay when time was running out for a charging boundary,
as they are on side streets, rather than main thoroughfares. I don't generally
have any complaints with the system; rather my complaint is with the article
and its odd bias.

So, I presume you don't mean me when you say "you".

------
scscsc
There is no way a bike costs that much. Unless they hide gold under the seat,
that is. They must be counting other expenses, like salaries or repairs and
dividing by the number of bikes.

And before feeling too sorry for the poor company that provides the service,
note that it thus obtained a monopoly on advertisement in Paris, which is _a
big deal_. They regularly have columns in the newspapers complaining about
vandalism, and how it's destroying its business, but they never complain that
they got too much advertising space ;-)

Also bike costs are shared with the city. I have not subscribed to the
service, since I very often see bike stations which are:

1) either full of bikes (no way to dock yours) 2) or with no bikes ready to
ride at all

which means it lacks one of the fundamental aspect you would need from such a
service: reliability. Technically, they are supposed to be moving bikes from
stations which are full to stations which are empty but I have the feeling
this is less likely to happen.

That's why I prefer having my own bike, even if it may be a pain to find a
good place to park it.

For some reason, parisians don't feel the same way I do about reliability.
They still use public transport and use the bike (when available) to go
to/from the closest metro station.

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gommm
The city where I studied, Rennes in France, has such a scheme in place since
about 9 years ago and there haven't been any vandalism that I could see...

One thing though is that a lot of people preferred their own bikes because the
bikes were not all that nice to ride (and I guess that Rennes being a small
city, it's not all that useful to be able to get a bike on the last leg of a
commute)...

~~~
chaosmachine
We have a similar bicycle share program in Ottawa. I haven't seen any
vandalism. The bikes always look clean and new. Possibly because only a few
people use them.

------
aohtsab
There's been a push in my area to introduce a similar concept, but with cars.
It's based off of the San Francisco model:

<http://www.citycarshare.org>

Anyone from the Bay area have any feedback?

~~~
antonovka
CityCarShare is fantastic if you live somewhere with sufficient density that
driving is (truly) not necessary for most trips.

We use bicycles, public transportation, and walking for nearly all of our
trips, but rely on citycarshare for shopping, moving furniture, occasional
weekend trips, etc. We also use a corporate car share account to move servers
to/from the colocation facility.

It's a fantastic service -- far cheaper than owning a car, and zero-hassle. I
hated dealing with the complexities of car ownership, from insurance and DMV
registration to regular maintenance, speeding/parking tickets, and the general
agitation of driving.

If you've never lived without a car, it can be surprisingly liberating to sell
yours off.

With the money you save not owning a car, you can afford higher rent for a
more desirable area, longer-term car rentals for one-off trips, etc.

------
Tichy
"Many of the specially designed bikes, which cost $3,500 each"

What were they thinking???

Surely it must be possible to design a cheaper bike for that purpose? The
electronics shouldn't be much more complicated than an average mobile phone?

~~~
rokhayakebe
Over-engineering. They could have done the same with bikes that cost
significantly less.

~~~
gaius
It's kinda like how London buses are made by Mercedes. You might think that's
an extravagance - but if things are to be used hard every day, it's a false
economy to cut corners up front (unless you go so cheap they're effectively
disposable).

~~~
Luc
Many delivery vans are made by Mercedes, too. There's nothing extravagant
about them - they are just good quality delivery vans.

There's Lamborghini tractors, too! <http://www.lamborghini-tractors.com/>

------
wingo
[http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/02/12/reports-of-velibs-
demi...](http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/02/12/reports-of-velibs-demise-
greatly-exaggerated/)

I would be surprised if JCDecaux's PR department were not at least partially
behind this.

(I go to Paris frequently. The bikes mostly work fine, and everyone loves
them. Here in Barcelona the system works pretty well, too.)

------
joubert
I live in the Financial District in Manhattan.

We have this free bicycle rental service: Bike Around Downtown
<https://www.bikearounddowntown.com/Default.aspx>

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snewe
Why didn't they just subsidize bike and bike lock purchases for individuals?

~~~
jusob
What is great with this program is that you take the bike only when you need
it. You don't have to carry it with you all the time. You can combine subway,
bus and bike. There are a lot of stations around Paris. You can use the bike
one way only if it is raining for example, and use the bus/subway to go back.

~~~
garnet7
> You can combine subway, bus and bike.

You can do the same thing (though not _quite_ as convenient) with a folding
bike.

They could put a plan in place to offer incentives for people to buy some
standard folding bicycle. Folders are expensive because there aren't too many
produced and because they need to be fairly light, however, mass-produced they
shouldn't be too expensive.

