French revolution: Rentable bikes every 900 feet
The French are turning Paris into a bicycle zone, pretty much overnight. Even now, astride small alleys and behind boulangeries, paving stones are being ripped to fit 750 bicycle rent ’stations.’”
Having enjoyed a similar bike rental program in Lyon, France last year, it’s exciting to see a similar endeavour being pursued in Paris. The system works, for the most part, marvellously. Problems include: finding a bike that “works” (many have wobbly tires, malfunctioning gears, etc.), finding the station where you want to return a bike full, some finicky-ness regarding the release mechanism (sometimes it just doesn’t want to let go), and not being able to purchase a short-term access card using a North American credit card (the French cards have a special security chip that we Canadians don’t yet have).
Both Lyon and Paris, mind, are not exactly bike friendly cities (unlike, for example, Stockholm or Copenhagen or Amsterdam). Too often bike lanes run straight into nowhere, if there are bike lanes at all. Truth be told, bike lanes should all be physically separated from traffic rather than being merely a painted lane at the side of the road (as we find so often in Canada, for example).
July 8th, 2007 at 11:11 am
the lend-a-bike system that has been tried in Stockholm during a year now hasnt really been working 100% either , seemingly it’s ever so hard to return a bike after borrowing it, but i’m always curious, why do people say that Stockholm would be such a grand city for biking?
Sharing semi-narrow innercity streets with car-owners whom usually hold some grudge against bikers and if you do bike alot you need to carry atleast two good locks unless you want it stolen(no matter the quality of the bike). If you happen to live in a suburb or semi-centre part of the city you need to cross the motorway atleast five times if you want to bike to work each and every day.
Paris seem grand for biking why not?
July 9th, 2007 at 5:04 am
I am not sure that finding the station full when you want to return your bike will be a real problem because, as you mentionned it, there are parks every 900 feet, and seriously (I live in Paris) you have a parking of about 30 bikes in every streets. From my office I can see 2 parkings, total 55 bikes! Those things have been growing like mushrooms in the last 3 weeks.
The real problem they’re facing now is the very bad weather! It has been raining for the last weeks! If it stays that bad the whole summer parkings will sure be full! It would be too bad not to be able to enjoy a good ride in a sunny Paris!
Another thing is “is it allowed to drive a bike when you’re drunk?”. Because a lot of people will!
Launch is planned for next Sunday, July 15, we’ll see how it works.
July 22nd, 2007 at 12:32 am
Bike lanes or bike consciousness?When I was fitter, my tendency was to seize a lane and hold it, on the principle of ’sail before steam’ which is supposed to hold on the water. Human-powered before machine-powered. Where I live in Melbourne there are bike tracks, usually shared with pedestrians: can be risky at night especially, and some cyclists can be very aggressive. Most of the drivers, especially truck drivers, are very good at steering round bikes. The big problem is bike lanes that fade to nothing on narrow stretches: one especially i use most nights diisappears just around a bend and behind a small tree, te very moment you become invisible to pursuing traffic. Nowadays I’m even more of a proselyte than before. Two wheels good, four wheels bad, as Orwell so nearly said. Bikes not bombs
s
August 6th, 2007 at 9:04 am
This concept has actually been launched first in Oslo, Norway in 2003. The ‘revolution’ has been arranged by ClearChannel (www.clearchannel.no/) and the bikes have been designed by FrostProdukt (http://frostprodukt.com/main.html).
This version can be found in Oslo, Trondheim, Göteborg and Barcelona.
I have tried the french version of the smartbike and it is poorly designed and far to hard to ride, whilst the Oslo version has not only a more pleasant look but is also simply a better bike.