After nearly a month since the launch of their ambitious “Velib” bike-sharing program, the city of Paris has been transformed by two-wheeled transit.
An article published today in the Times of London states that in the first three weeks, the bikes were borrowed a whopping 1.2 million times.
With Portland considering a similar program, the success in Paris will give Commissioner Sam Adams’ “Red Bike” idea even more momentum.
Here’s more from the story in the Times:
“Taxi drivers and other critics said that it would never work, but three weeks after Paris was sprinkled with 10,000 self-service bicycles, the scheme is proving a triumph and a new pedalling army appears to be taming the city’s famously fierce traffic.”
The article also notes some initial glitches,
“…there have been few teething troubles… one is a result of residents using them to glide downhill to work and then taking public transport home, resulting in gluts of bikes at some low-level stands and shortages at higher altitude stations.
New patterns are forming, with arriving commuters stripping the stands at railway stations. To ensure a morning ride, some have taken — illegally — to securing bikes at night with their own locks…50 were torn from their moorings and 180 vandalised in the first weeks of the scheme.”
The City of Portland is currently seeking proposals from private companies to manage a bike-rental/sharing system. All proposals must be in by September 17th. Read the official request and more information on Transportation Commissioner Sam Adams’ blog.
\”…there have been few teething troubles… one is a result of residents using them to glide downhill to work and then taking public transport home, resulting in gluts of bikes at some low-level stands and shortages at higher altitude stations.\”
This is the Parisian equivalent of the Zoo Bomb, le Bombe de Zoo.
Seriously, are we going to have to get *real* cyclists to replenish all the stations in the West Hills? OK, I wasn\’t serious. I was *just kidding.*
I think this is an exciting idea. Just don\’t listen to the nay-sayers. It\’s at leasts worth a go.
I thought the same thing a.O.!
just FYI, the RFP for the service lists a bunch of potential locations and (so far) the West Hills aren\’t on the list.
I would be careful about getting all gooey about this. I spent and hour or so this morning looking at Paris web cams. http://www.123cam.com No bikes to be seen. Narrow roads with lots of traffic, lots of pedstrians, no bike lanes.
I am not saying it is not wonderful, it is just the Times article makes it sound like the city has been transformed. Looking at the cams it looks like the same place to me.
Coyote, I haven\’t noticed anyone \”getting all gooey\” about it yet, but given that, according to the article, each bike is being used an average of six times a day and there has been a 48% increas in bicycle use in Paris since 2001, I\’d say you should at least entertain the hypothesis that your singular hour of web cam observation may not have captured the whole picture. Which cams did you look at?
As far as the piling of bikes at the bottom of hills, and Parisians locking up their favorites, I think the folks who (may) manage our system need a card system that i.d.\’s the culprits….who then get fined- ala returning a movie a day late. I wonder how the checkout/in system works there?
This caught my eye:
\”However, he added that one of the main reasons that similar schemes had failed in England, for example in Southampton and Bristol, is because of a lack of co-operation from the rail networks, who have objected to providing parking space near stations.\”
How about a pay-per-altitude system for rentals? Your fee is increased by $.50 for each 100 feet lost, and decreased for every 100 feet gained. Entrepreneurial climber-types could even make a little money returning cycles to higher points (a la the Smart Cart systems at airports, where kids actually make money hustling abandoned carts back to their bases).
Jeff, #7, I couldn\’t have said it better myself. Or just flat out pay people a small fee to move bikes from over crowded stations to the others. Bored kids and homeless would cash in quick! I would have done it, it\’s better then picking up smelly beer cans for arcade money.
And DK, I don\’t think punitive action is really warranted here. I typically ride a bike into work and take the bus back, mostly because of time. (ride back is all uphill and takes twice as long)
Being a frequent traveler to Paris…you would have to be crazy or have balls of steel to ride you bike in downtown Paris. Outside of town is great…inside of town…No Way!
Downtown Portland on the other hand would be fantastic…at least until they are all stolen like the old yellow bikes.
50 torn from their moorings, and another
180 vandalized.
Sounds just like our yellow bike project…
Do we need another headache like that again, Sam?
I think not.
with the amount of bike theft in this city, do you all think this would really work here? The yellow bike program failed due to theft and vandalism….
I hope it would succeed but just can\’t really see it happening…meth addicts will have a good time chopping them apart I fear as they\’re an open target.
hopefully that is being considered and plans for deterrence are in place…
Ya, I ditto jeremy\’s thought on this. Although I would have use for a bike rental system I don\’t see how they could keep it running with the amount of bike theft in our area.
I saw a link here in another post to a company in Germany that makes freestanding bike service centers so that is bout the only way a rental service could function here. Like a library where you physically go in, rent the bike and then physically return it later.
Hmmm… I dunno.
Is the Yellow Bike program a really good comparison? From a rough translation of the page (warning: some words translate funnily), it seems that you have to have an account with the service. This means that they can identify who doesn\’t return a bike. And if somebody stole one from a valid renter, who could they sell it to?
a.Ø. Actually for the pre-Murdoch Times, that article would have been positively gooey. (Alas, Times change and now the WSJ will too.) The article is eerily similar to a July 23 article in the LA Times. Hmm, could this have been written from a press release from the Mayors office? Lets check web based news services for Velib. It turns out that newspapers all over the world are carrying the story with the same punch lines: Wow, a million rentals in less than a month. Ha, ha, all the bikes are at the bottom of the hill. Darn those cheaters putting their own locks on bikes. 48% increase blah, blah, blah. Press release reporting always sets off my spidey sense.
Perhaps Velib is a runaway success; perhaps in a year it will be even more of a success. It is probably too early to tell. However, I think it is neat that Paris is trying.
As far as transforming Paris, I am going to let you be empirical and dig up your own webcams. They are easy enough to find. Compare those images to webcams of central London. Draw your own conclusions. Or not, I am sure another press release will come along soon enough.
I also personally think it is more dangerous to us all to have random people, randomly jumping on bikes.
Encouraging this too much is likeplaying the Pied Piper.
Let\’s lead these folks out into our unsafe bike lanes, let alone normal, unstriped streets, to their death. Weaving, looking lost, etc.
It is great to encourage more cycling.
But to be uber-enthusiastic to the point of encouraging too much cycling is quite another.
I think we need to tone it down a notch and take care of the cycling problems we already have, before creating new headaches.
My understanding about the failings of the Yellow Bike program was due to a lack of accountability. There was no personal reason to return a bike. But if you are paying by the minute and the machine has your credit card, then you (certainly I) would be motivated to make sure it gets checked in properly.
I think with that function it addresses one of the flaws of Yellow Bikes.
Overall, I\’d like to see it attempted. There\’s no way to find out but to try.
to #13…Logan, meth addicts don\’t sell whole products back to anybody…they\’re returned to scrap metal yards after each item has been throughly reduced to unidentifiable pieces…
#15…Dabby, who are these \”random people\” jumping on bikes you speak of? I see enough sketchy commuting behavior by hundreds of riders each week to know it really couldn\’t be much worse (running stop signs, no helmets, riding against traffic, etc.), in terms of personal safety, than it is now..
when the ideas pop up as solutions to PDX\’s inherently small roadways, there may be better approaches towards solving those problems than being exclusionary or elitist towards new commuters (one major obstacles towards enticing new ridership..at least it is in the racing community). This is a good promotional idea and if financial support is offered it should undergo a pilot program I think…I just fear the bikes will disappear after a short period of time due to inappropriate locking techniques, use of cable locks, etc.
#15 after a month only 0.5% of the bikes have been stolen. That doesn\’t sound like the yellow bike program to me at all. The business model that the Paris system uses assumes a 10% per year loss rate so if anything they are doing better than expected. By making the bikes distinctive resale value is lowered substantially and so theft isn\’t nearly as much of a problem.
The bikes don\’t need to be locked if the system is properly implemented because they will be returned to a station when the ride is complete. The bikes aren\’t designed to be kept for a long period/locked up by the users.
In light of Trimet possibly limiting bikes on the max it seems like this system might actually help reduce the number of bikes on the train since people could actually use a bike locker on the home side of their trip and rental bikes on the work side if there is a return station near where they work.
I think the program sounds great and I just hope that the city will put stations in places besides just downtown.
Bjorn
@ #14:
Coyote, your continued adulteration of my handle, personal insults, and sarcastic tone suggest you\’ve got some pretty serious issues to work out before we can have a reasonable conversation. Good luck with that.
I was in Paris last year and rented a bike (alas before this great new rental system). I, too, initially thought it would be insane to bike in Paris. However, the new bike infrastructure (bus/bike only lanes, bike lanes, sharrows, bike traffic signals, etc.) that they\’ve been adding over the last 5 years is great. It\’s amazing to see the investment France is making in bicycle infrastructure in Paris and other cities — they clearly are taking bikes seriously.
Drivers are, for the most part, quite accommodating and polite, and during the week we were there, I noticed quite a few cyclists. Being tourists, we pretty much stuck to the central city where traffic is thickest, and I never felt endangered (granted, I did stand aside and observe the traffic circle before attempting to ride through). I\’ve got to say that it\’s much more scenic than taking the subway, and way more fun.
I\’d love to see some of those \”random people\” who drive those cars and trucks by me every day get on bikes… seriously, what\’s more dangerous, some idiot who might not know how to ride a bike, or some idiot who might not know how to drive a car?
I do agree that this program could be great for Portland, but also don\’t see it working here at this time. The city needs to get serious about tackling bike theft before we can seriously consider a bike sharing program.
Distinctive may not help when it\’s cut up into pieces and sold for scrap.
Don\’t get me wrong. I *like* the idea, and I hope it works. Just a little skeptical about it unless they lojack the bikes or make them out of some crazy plastic/steel laminate to make them unattractive to scrappers.
I think it is an interesting idea- although one that wont help me much due to my height, but I am all in favor of anything that gets people out on the road by bike. I think the more drivers bike, the more aware of bikers they will become. I totaly disagree with Dabby on that one- the status quo isnt acceptable (although it isnt that bad either for biking in this city either, just there is always room for improvement).
Mr. Viddy
Something like this exists in portland, it\’s called Waterfront Bicycle Retals and It does exactly what you describe. The way we cover our bikes in case of theft or damage is to authorize people\’s credit cards for 300$ as an incentive not to screw around with our stuff. It works really well and most of our customers are really satisfied.
I think most of the people who posted here really don\’t understand how the system works… you swipe your credit card, it sticks a $500 deposit on it if you don\’t return the bike, and you normally check in the bike at A DIFFERENT bike checkout center within 30 minutes, so that you don\’t have to pay any money. If you go over 30 minutes, it charges you a buck or so, depending on the time.
You don\’t keep the bike for more than a few hours; you can quickly swipe for a new bike whenever you want one. Therefore, anyone stupid enough to steal a bike would be caught on a surveillance camera (which would be on all bike centers), and anyone doubly stupid enough to pay a $500 deposit on a bike and never return it likely won\’t get their money back.