v-hello, velib', vello, velov'... Frenchmen are pedaling
It's been of the most shocking revelation of my recent visit to France. The French are riding bikes; a lot and in modern and innovative ways. It seems that the Parisian initiative, "The velib'" got a lot of press from around the world. [1] so I was really eager to try this new system (launched during the summer 2007), and If I were expecting change, I was expecting to notice it only in Paris. Well, I indeed saw a lot of positive change but I also noticed it in other towns. I can't wait to see Paris and other major towns in a few years, I hope the future built is for less pollution, less noise, less stress, more "green". velib' and similar system are surely one good step in that direction.
velib' would change my transportation experience in Paris...
In Paris I almost exclusively used public transportations. It's relatively fast, not THAT expensive (though it is, if you don't work) and convenient. But It's depressing.
I only used velib' once for a short trip (So I realize that's not a great deal of experience, comments are welcome in this conversation)
The ride was 25 minutes (I got lost) so less than 30 minutes and thus free. It was raining a bit and it was dark, but nonetheless it was fantastic to be at the surface. Paris is a beautiful city but it's hard to enjoy it from underground. I went on l'"ile de la cite", Saint Michel, Saint-Germain... It was just lovely, I can't imagine how cool it must be in summer. Also I felt pretty safe during the whole ride. You have to be careful at intersections though (cars cross the bike paths there).
How it works?
The New York Times put that well:
The Vélib system is simple. You swipe a credit card in a kiosk that is located beside a row of parked bikes and purchase a one-day, one-week or one-year subscription. (The system also takes a 150-euro deposit authorization to ensure the bike's safe return.) The machine prints out a card with your code number and you enter a personal password. You tap in this code and password to unlock a bike and ride off.
When you've reached your destination, you look for the nearest Vélib station, click your bike into an empty dock, watch a light change from yellow to green to acknowledge that you've returned your bike, and you're done. The first half-hour is free, after that the cost is 1 euro, or about $1.45, for the second half-hour, 2 euros for the third half-hour and 4 euros for each half hour after that.
Kudos to the city and partners, the sheer implementation of the idea is brilliant
The immediate consequence of this success is that you cannot miss velib' users there are literally everywhere.
- Bike stations are ubiquitous
- The Bike lanes and contraflows are numerous and well designed. There are 371 kilometers of cycle paths in the city. I guess you can probably plan your trip to almost exclusively use the safest path.
- Bike and 2-wheels parking are numerous too (though it's not really related to velib') It looks like the city built a lot of parking space for 2-wheels which is great. For sure there is no park-meters to hijack as in San Francisco, so the city had to build something else :)
- The fares appear to be fair, though I haven't practiced enough to really tell
velib' quirks (most of them are minor)
I heard that american tourists were running into issues when trying the system because of the silly credit cards there were using (no chip). So at first I tried with my french credit card (with a nice little chip, thanks Mr. Moreno). Well it didn't work, don't ask me why. I changed station just to be sure, and it was the same issue. Oddly when I tried my dumb american credit card it just worked!
I should probably not complain about this one, but by using my american credit card I wasn't charged for my velib' at all! Maybe because the amount was low (1 euro for the day pass, then I used it for free because not for too long). So it's not perfect... (well for me it's surely is :)
Update: "They" probably read me, since this morning I've been billed $1.52!
In a very short period of time (a few days) I saw quite a few bugs (the whole station turned red for a few minutes) (reportedly[fr] it's because the stations are running windows and not Linux, are trolls riding bikes ? :)
More annoying, it looks like it's quite often that stations are full. It's probably more the case during the night and the week-end? I know that the staff is reshuffling bikes around stations, maybe they don't do it 24/24. From my understanding the problem is that users are taking bikes to the same locations (to go out). so the stations are filling, and if a station is full you can't return the bike. Apparently, you are credited 15 free minutes to go to another one. I know that my friend Julie cancelled a gym class because she couldn't find a spot to park.
The velib' are bulky (22kg) but that's fine, as a regular bike commutes what I find more annoying is the lack of higher gear (1, 2 and 3 only), I found myself only using the third one and wishing for twice as many (or at least one allowing me to go FAST).
The last drawback I see, is that velib' doesn't encourage people to wear helmets. Face it, it's dangerous! :/
Elsewhere
It seemed to me that bikes were everywhere during my trip to France, maybe it's a consequence of me becoming a cyclist in San Francisco (I hadn't ridden a bike for years before settling in SF), maybe people were biking that much before but I wasn't aware of it?
Paris surely got a lot of press (see a few references below [1]), but it's not the only city in France where you can bike. Soissons (north-east from Paris) doesn't have a bike sharing program but kudos to the old lady (70-80 years old) I spotted biking in town, at night, by -6C).
When I visited Rennes, I learned about the "velo a la carte" which I believe is the world first system of the like using computers.
Then in Aix-En-Provence, I spotted v'hello
In Marseille it's called "Le velo"
And I now that Lyon has "velov'" for a long time.
Looking for the wikipedia entry for the list of projects it looks like the increase in new projects is accelerating.
[1] blog & press references:
This english video by NYC folks presents the system just after the launch and before improvements. You see bikes, stations and users. Fun fact out of 1400+ stations in Paris the video is made from the very own station I tried (a few meters from my friend Julie's apartment)
- NYT article
- SF-Gate article, same system in preparation in the city by the bay?
- Le capitaine sauve par velib' [fr]
- video from streetsblog
- a pool dedicated to velib'
- official press section
- bike hugger
- http://www.parisdailyphoto.com/2007/09/velib-to-go-international.html
- One good article from washcycle great blog
- ... and a second one
Comments
There is an area of Town in Tulsa, Oklahoma that has a smaller-scale bike share program. You swipe your credit card and for a refundable $100 deposit you can "rent" the bicycle for up to 24 hours. So, if you return the bike before the 24 hours is up your rental is basically free! I am not sure how many other US cities do this, but I know that I do wish that bike share programs were more prevalent.