French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/world/europe/31bikes.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=all

by robg • 17 years ago

51 47 17 years ago

  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...

ugh2• 17 years ago

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.

a-priori• 17 years ago

Switzerland also has a bike rental program in several cities (http://www.suisseroule.ch), and students can borrow them for free (insured against their university account). During the summer, I saw people riding those bikes around all the time, but I have no idea how popular the program is. You can also rent bikes at all the major train stations.

felixc• 17 years ago

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..."

moai• 17 years ago

http://www.bikemi.com

In Milan (Italy) works very well

Monkeyget• 17 years ago

Brussels too : http://en.villo.be/

faragon• 17 years ago

In Barcelona (Spain) there is a similar service, called "Bicing"( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicing), which I use for going to work and moving through the city (30 euro/year). It allows me to save above 400 euro/year on metro/underground/bus tickets, while enjoying the trips.

About vandalism and bike maintenance: also there is vandalism, you can see stolen bikes parked in the middle of nowhere, some homeless using it for moving their things, etc. However, its impact, in my opinion, it's much lower that the shown in Paris. Most people in Barcelona, except some car drivers, LOVE the services, and treat the bikes with respect. Obviously, by its use, the bikes have to be repaired (tires, brakes, gears, seat clip, etc.), but the abuse is quite low.

The punishment for losing a bike is 200 euro, so I asume that it is what a bike costs.

As curiosity, there is a photo of the Bicing service into Joel's "The Duct Tape Programmer" blog entry (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/09/23.html)

dotcoma• 17 years ago

I saw no vandalism and no problems at all when I used the service in Paris last month.

Tichy2• 17 years ago

"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• 17 years ago

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

gaius• 17 years ago

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).

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

Quite. In Amsterdam, people mostly ride boring-looking, old-fashioned but very durable bikes, rather than being particular objects of desire. On the other hand, no public program is immune from vandals or the disaffected - some of whom are truly desperate but many of whom are just trolls.

bulanga• 17 years ago

I seriously doubt they cost that much.

The only electronics on the bike I can think of is the head light LED and the dynamo to power it. The rest of the electronics are in the docking stations.

I'm thinking the $3500 price probably includes the docking station which is kinda misleading.

Luc2• 17 years ago

When it looks too crazy to be true, it probably isn't true.

Wikipedia: 'The price per bicycle has been variously stated as US$1,300 (if provided by JCDecaux), €300, or US$3,460 apiece'.

300 euro seems like a reasonable price for just the bicycle itself, the other figures must include other costs. Also, let's not forget that the scheme is subsidized by giving JCDecaux a monopoly on a lot of advertising space in the city, so even at a high cost it may still be profitable to them.

RevRal• 17 years ago

I wasn't too surprised that they cost a lot to make. I mean, after all, shopping carts cost ~175$.

Though, 1300$ does sound more reasonable.

snewe• 17 years ago

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

jusob• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

> 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.

mcd• 17 years ago

That is what I also thought. From the article:

> Many of the specially designed bikes, which cost $3,500 each,

They have thought extremely hard how to make the bike so expensive. A fancy normal bike costs $200. How the hell do you pay that much for a bike?

I paid $5000 for my car...

Tiktaalik• 17 years ago

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.

ugh2• 17 years ago

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.

Tichy2• 17 years ago

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.

barrkel2• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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.

barrkel2• 17 years ago

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".

gommm• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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.

abalashov2• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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).

abalashov2• 17 years ago

I was figuring that it such orderliness, cleanliness and safety might be a characteristic of small Germanic cities - a category into which Berlin would not fit.

Perhaps I am wrong about that.

justlearning• 17 years ago

stealing - reminds me of this video showing indifference in NYC (even with cops in sight).(substitute NYC with any major city)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbklkFuFk-4

leif• 17 years ago

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.

vicehead• 17 years ago

The same is true for India and China. Maybe because there are too many bikes here for anybody to really want to steal them.

joubert• 17 years ago

I live in the Financial District in Manhattan.

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

aohtsab• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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.

hyperbovine• 17 years ago

I love it. Having a car in the bay area is a total pain in the ass. CCS seems to be an unbridled success. The cars are always new and clean. I have never heard of one getting broken into or stolen--I'm sure they all have lojack. Really the total opposite of what this article is describing.

trailbraker• 17 years ago

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.

scscsc• 17 years ago

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.

wingo• 17 years ago

http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/02/12/reports-of-velibs-demi...

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.)

French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality

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