The Paris "Vélib'" (pronounced vay-leeb) program, started 15 July 2007, has turned out to be a resounding success. Our own observation in July 2008 is that the city-wide rent-a-bike is used everywhere, all the time, by everyone.
Vélib' is a contraction of vélo liberté, literally translated to "freedom bicycle". The "freedom" in this case refers to the freedom of easy transportation, not the freedom from paying.
The Vélib' is actually so cheap that it's as close to free as you can get. It costs 1 euro for the day, and every first half-hour is free. So if you use a Vélib' once, for less than 30 minutes, it costs you 1 euro. If you use a Vélib' 15 times during the day, each time for under a half-hour, it costs you only the original 1 euro.
Pay. You pay with a credit card/bank card at an automatic kiosk at any Vélib' station. The 1-€ 1-day pass, or 5-€ weekly pass, is then used every time you take out a bike. An annual abonnément cost €29, a bargin for Parisiens.
A long day's use of one Vélib' will be much more expensive, as the cost goes up as the time extends: €1 for the 2nd half-hour, €2 for the 3rd, and €4 for each additional half-hour. The idea is that the bikes are really for frequent short trips, not for a day's touring.
All The Time. We've watched the Vélib's in profusion between midnight and 2 AM. Clubbers, late-night diners and other revelers bypassing expensive (and rare) taxis in the hours of reduced or non-existent metro service. Mornings and evenings see a lot of people on their way to or from work, and there's generally a steady stream of them all during the day.
It's easy to recognize as it flashes by on the street, with its distinctive grey color, the dash-board style handlebars and the large rear wheel guard. The bright-white led headlamp is constantly on, so you notice them coming. The pair of amber reflectors on each wheel help for night-time cross traffic, and there have been only 3 fatalities in the 12 months; probably not bad for this city of multi-millions of people.
Everybody. Business-suited men and professionally dressed women use them, mostly in the mornings and the evenings, but we see many of this class during the day as well. Young people (teens, twenties, or so) are on them all the time, and middle-aged and beyond people we see peddling along with the front basket loaded with groceries or shopping bags. Often groups of friends are out for a ride together, sometimes in "mixed" groups including personal bicycles — no bicycle-bigotry here.
There are now 200'000 Vélib' users with an annual abonnément. On average, each Vélib' is used by 8-10 people a day.
Everywhere. The Vélib' stands seem to us to be in every strategic spot we could think of throughout the center of Paris — and in some places that surprised us. There is an occasional problem with an empty Vélib' stand, or one that is full when an arriving Véliber wants to park the bike, but ever-active maintenance crews transport the bikes from the over-full sites to the under-full ones.
If you have the time or opportunity for Internet access (http://www.en.velib.paris.fr/), you can get real-time information on where the Vélib' stations are, and how many bikes are available and how many free slots there are at any specific station.
There are 16'000 Vélib's in Paris (July 2008). By the end of this year there will be over 20'000 in the city, and another 4'500 in some of the surrounding towns, the banlieue. By the end of 2008 there will be about 1'400 Vélib' stations in central Paris and another 300 in the banlieue. Oh yes, 3'000 Vélib' bikes were stolen in the first year — we don't know if that's statistically low or high.
Ready to Go. Every individual bike stand has a pair of small lights: green to show the bike is OK and ready to go; red to indicate there's a problem. We haven't worked out how the red light activated, since there is no "auto-testing" of the bicycle.
It's common for an experienced Véliber arriving at a Vélib' site to walk along the row of bikes testing tire pressures before selecting one to use.
Maintenance crews travel around the city checking and maintaining the bicycles. (We once watched one maintenance guy working diligently on a bike, while the three other technicians huddled in a nearby doorway watching, staying out of the drizzle.) An average of 1'500 of the Vélib' bicycles are repaired every day.
In one year, every Vélib' travels 10'000 km, 50 times that of a normal bicycle. That calulates out at 27 km a day for every day of the year. Not bad for the short inter-city jaunts they're used for.
Cost Effective for Paris. The 27 million rentals in the first year have brought in 20 million euros for the Ville de Paris, and another 60 million euros for JCDecaux, the publicity company that manages the system.
Source. Our statistical type numbers came from the Le Parisien newspaper, 12 July 2008.
|
Photo gallery of 5 photos for Paris Vélib
