Bicycle liberation thrives in Paris

One of the most fascinating things I saw in my recent visit to Paris were these bicycle rental stations. They are literally everywhere you go, in every neighborhood, and everyone uses them. They are rented through an electronic kiosk (at the top of the pic, looking similar to the public parking kiosks that are largely replacing meters here in New York.) Since I don’t read French I wasn’t sure how it worked, but doing a quick search I’ve found several articles on them and how they are storming Paris. (Best overview is from IHT here.)

I’ve long wanted to have a bicycle since I’ve lived in New York. The streets are mostly flat, it’s a small area, and it just seems perfectly suited to bicycle travel. However, a few things have deterred me: 1) the car traffic, which on these crowded, sometimes narrow streets is very hostile to bicycle traffic. 2) my closet-sized living space allows me no storage for a bicycle and 3) theft—on any block here there’s a corpse of a bicycle that has been stripped clean.

So would something like Paris’ Velib’ system work here? It would solve 2 of my 3 issues (storage and theft), and my sense is a system like this, if it could survive the inevitable vandalism it would face, would get used by MANY New Yorkers. And the new influx of bicyclists would then force the city to make the streets more bicycle friendly (something they are already trying to do, albeit in a rather half-assed manner).

Velib’ is a public run enterprise in Paris, although the stations and bicycle maintenance has been outsourced to the outdoor advertiser JC Decaux in a scheme that sounds similar to the newstand and bus stop rejuvenation scheme New York gave to Cemusa. That gives hope that something like Velib’ could be introduced here, but sadly I don’t see it happening any time soon.

Photo credit: Rcsmit/Wikipedia