
Thefts puncture Paris bike scheme - nickb
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7881079.stm
======
natrius
JCDecaux's losses from theft are explicitly limited by their contract with
Paris, so their sudden change of heart is probably more of a PR move to aid in
contract negotiations than a true sign of the viability of bike sharing
schemes.

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

Maybe one day, the peninsula will have a quality bike sharing network to help
solve Caltrain's last mile problem. One day...

------
ionfish
The other side of the story: [http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/02/12/reports-
of-velibs-demi...](http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/02/12/reports-of-velibs-
demise-greatly-exaggerated/)

~~~
zupatol
To sum it up: the bike system is operated by an advertiser, who is now using
negative PR to strenghten his position in negociations with the city of Paris.

Why on earth is an advertiser operating bikes?

The city of Paris lets him use its outdoor displays for free. It seems the
only advantage for the mayor is that he can claim the bike system works at no
cost. This is probably the reason why he lets the advertiser keep secret the
amount of his revenues from the displays. That barely honest financing scheme
looks like the main problem.

~~~
wingo
Agreed. Here in Barcelona we have the ignomious fate of Bicing (bicing.com)
being run by /ClearChannel/, of all organizations. Jeez.

~~~
sounddust
The company that runs the one in Paris is JCDecaux, basically the ClearChannel
of Europe. They fought and won against CC to build/implement the system in
Paris.

------
jacquesm
One more piece of evidence that it only takes a very small percentage of jerks
to screw it up for the rest of us...

The same goes for the internet, nowadays if you design anything at all that
has an end-user component you'll spend at least as much time at making it
jerk-proof and doing all kinds of abuse analysis as you spend on doing
features.

~~~
gravitycop
_nowadays if you design anything at all that has an end-user component you'll
spend at least as much time at making it jerk-proof and doing all kinds of
abuse analysis_

<http://www.google.com/search?q=%22always+blames+his+tools%22>

Echoes of Kozmo: <http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/14/technology/kozmo_redux>

_No more 50-cent deliveries [...]

Customers of Kozmo.com who fondly remember getting single pints of ice cream
delivered on a whim won't get off that easy this time. MaxDelivery has a $10
minimum order, and there's a $4.95 delivery charge for orders under $50.
Siragusa said this is to keep customers from abusing the system, as they did
with Kozmo, and he says MaxDelivery's average order size is much different
than Kozmo's.

"Someone ordered a pack of Mentos. Then two hours later they'd order a pint of
ice cream," said Siragusa. "People did this because there was no penalty.
Kozmo had a number of orders that were unprofitable."_

Kozmo's founders designed its system to reward customers for making frequent
low-value orders. When the customer base responded in a way that should have
been predicted by the Kozmo founders, instead of recognizing and fixing their
error, those founders instead called it "abuse".

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
I'm perplexed by your implied comment that having to spend time making your
product jerk-proof and performing abuse analysis is only done by poor workmen.

It seems to me that work must be done to create value, and work must be done
to make the system idiot proof (despite the continuing ingenuity of idiots),
and this is true regardless of the talent and abilities of those producing the
service or product.

~~~
gravitycop
_I'm perplexed_

Work (value creation) can be more or less efficient. As stated, an inefficient
workman blames his tools, instead of the way he is going about his work. In
this case, and often in other cases, the customer base forms part of the
toolset. The workman is saying that his tools are not doing what they are
supposed to be doing, and that it is _their_ fault.

Here is more on this phenomenon:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control>

_Internals tend to attribute outcomes of events to their own control.
Externals attribute outcomes of events to external circumstances._

In the present case, the customer base would be seen as uncontrollable (only
susceptible to external control) by the inefficient workman, and controllable
(susceptible to internal control) by the efficient workman.

 _work must be done to create value [...] regardless of [...] talent and
abilities_

Yes. But do you mean, as Marxists contend, that variance in ability plays
little or no role in variance in the efficiency of the work?:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value#Marx.27s_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value#Marx.27s_contribution)

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
_In this case ... the customer base forms part of the toolset._

I do not subscribe to this theory. Toolsets can be changed, improved or
mastered. I can do none of these with my customers. I can only do it with the
things I use to create my services. I use tools to create services to assist
my customers. Calling my customers "tools" does not help me.

 _The workman is saying that his tools are not doing what they are supposed to
be doing, and that it is their fault._

I disagree with this analysis. The workman is saying that there are (usually a
small number of) customers who require that the services be more complex in
their implementation than might otherwise be expected. This is not the same
thing. I know that around 80% to 90% of my customers never provoke the inbuilt
protection systems in my code. The protection systems account for about 50% of
my code. I have measured these things because I work in the defense industry.
I know that around half my code is there because up to 20% of my customers
don't use the system the way it was intended to be used. Whether this is lack
of training, lack of awarenes, or malice doesn't matter. I don't "blame" them,
but I know that if my customers only did what they were shown in training, and
didn't do what they are trained not to do, 50% of my code would be
unnecessary.

 _But do you mean, as Marxists contend, that variance in ability plays little
or no role in variance in the efficiency of the work?_

Of course not. I mean that for every worker, some of their work is producing
features and facilities, and some of their work is protecting against
inappropriate actions. The balance between these two might change with the
abilities of the workers, but I suspect not much. It's a pretty constant ratio
across my programmers. To assume what you seem to have assumed from what I
have said is, again, perplexing. Perhaps we constantly talk past each other,
but I'm finding it difficult in general to understand your mindset.

~~~
gravitycop
>> the customer base forms part of the toolset.

> Toolsets can be changed, improved or mastered. I [cannot] do [this] with my
> customers.

You cannot provide any value to the world that would involve a different
customer base? After Kozmo re-emerged as MaxDelivery, it changed its customer
base (one of its tools in value creation) by starting out with only high-
density neighborhoods of Manhattan (and it continues to change its customer
base as it gradually expands its delivery areas). It has mastered its customer
base (again, one of its tools in value creation) by learning how that tool
reacts to various delivery deals, and by employing _improved_ delivery deals.
Please see the article linked above.

For at least many decades, bike-sharing advocates and politicians have been
failing to efficiently employ the tools at their disposal, one of which is
their customer base. That tool, the customer base, has been blamed over and
over again as "the problem" as bike-sharing advocates and politicians have
repeatedly employed essentially the same defectively-designed policies.

~~~
jacquesm
I don't think that you can compare a broken business model with abuse of a
system by spammers and others hell bent on destroying some of the nicer sites
that well meaning teams have developed.

By that analogy usenet was 'asking for it' because it was open, worked and
actually contained great content. Of course that meant that it was ideal for
the jerks of this world to try to peddle their wares, eventually resulting in
the near destruction of usenet.

On the web the relationship between the number of people that you have to
employ to look after abusers vs the number of people that are actually
productive is a good way to measure your success....

~~~
gravitycop
_the relationship between the number of people that you have to employ to look
after abusers vs the number of people that are actually productive is a good
way to measure your success._

Yes. That is what I said. The workman with _in_ ternal-locus-of-control
improves his value-creation system based on feedback, and is seen as _more_
successful. The workman with _ex_ ternal-locus-of-control blames parts of his
value-creation system for acting (in his eyes) wrongly, and is seen as _less_
successful.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Recognising that customers behave a certain way and taking that into account
is valuable. _Blaming_ the customer for behaving that way is of little use.
You have conflated people _recognising_ that people behave in ways that cause
difficulty with _blaming_ them for doing so. Not helpful.

Separation of concerns is as useful in customer identification as it is in
writing software.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
This has similarities with the Prisoners' Dilemma:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma>

Although we'd all be better off if we all cooperated, there will always be
those who take their personal advantage and screw everyone else.

It's too easy to label them as sociopaths, and in some sense they are, but
game theory ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory> ) predicts this
behaviour.

It sucks, but you won't change it.

This also has consequences for social networks, such as Hacker News. It's OK
when everyone shares a common purpose and common interests, but get enough
newbies and the culture won't propagate.

The various car share schemes that require significant buy-in and have
penalties for non-compliance and that shifts the game theory into a
configuration that works. Maybe something similar will eventually be required
for social networks too.

~~~
gcheong
I was thinking that this fits more along the lines of tragedy of the commons.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons>

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Sorry, I should've been clearer. Yes, this is what's commonly known as the
tragedy of the commons, but that is more-or-less a (large) multiple-player
version of the Prisoners' Dilemma, which is easier to analyse and harder to
condemn. There are differences, but the underlying principle is similar
enough.

Too often these days people simply say "Tragedy of the Commons", wring their
hands, and say that people are idiots. I was trying to make it clearer that
game theory really does predict this behavior, that it's not irrational, that
it is to be expected, and you have to change the rules to change the behavior.

Exactly _how_ to change the rules is left as an exercise for the interested
reader.

------
jackowayed
They should figure out a way where you rent them with a credit card, and if
you don't return it and scan your credit card getting credit for returning it,
they charge you to replace it.

They could still get damaged and returned as such, but at least they couldn't
get completely stolen, which is the most valuable thing for criminals to do
since that actually gets them money.

~~~
enqk
Here's the thing I don't understand. You cannot rent the bike unless you use a
debit card (credit cards are _very_ rare in france) or a monthly/yearly metro
subscription. So they actually must know who rented the bike when it
disappeared.

~~~
jackowayed
oh, that's weird. You'd think they'd just charge them for it then.

Also,

> _credit cards are_ very _rare in france_

You mean you guys don't generally allow yourselves to get deep into debt at
absurd interest rates? I can't imagine living in a country like that!

Next you're going to tell me that when you have

~~~
cedsav
Bank ('debit') cards in France kinda work like US credit cards. The bank will
happily let your account balance go negative and then charge you fees+high
interest rate.

I've been in the US 7 years and I haven't quite yet understood why credit
cards companies and banks are separate entities. (regulation?)

~~~
enqk
French banks usually give a (small) credit line above which deposits must stay
(interest-free). Below it you pay the full fledged interest rate + fee. The
debit cards tend to debit your purchases at the end of the month too. So in
the usual case, within the credit line, it is financed by fees rather than
interests.

However credit cards do exist, even if they have been maligned for a long time
in media:

Major credit card issuers in France are often linked to the retail sector (see
<http://www.pass.fr>) .. others got consolidated into traditional banks
(cetelem for example)

The traditionally French "no permanent credit" model for banks tend to raise
fees and favour low deposits I guess.

In both cases anyway the banks pray on the poor / moderately poor people to
"dress them up" with all sorts of products and credits they don't need. (And
arguably, that society pays up after 30 years)

------
AlfaWolph
Would something so simple as making a deposit that is released upon return not
help?

------
jgrahamc
Toulouse has a similar scheme... it's not the bikes that seemed to get stolen,
it's the shopping baskets on the front that either get unscrewed or simply cut
off.

------
sam_in_nyc
Why are they calling this bike rental company a "scheme"?

~~~
gravitycop
The company is not what is being called a scheme. What the company was being
employed by the city of Paris to execute is being called a scheme:

 _Championed by Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, the bikes were part of an
attempt to "green" the capital. [...]

The original contract gave the advertising company a 10-year licence to
exploit 1,600 city-wide billboards in return for running the scheme [...]

The scheme was modelled on one in Lyon [...]

It is also being copied overseas with London, San Francisco and Singapore all
intending to set up similar schemes._

