August 10, 2008 | 12:00am
Now running in several French cities, the self-service bicycle scheme is catching on fast. And its success is being exported too.
Called variously Velo’v, Velib’, V’hello and Velodi, the self-service bicycle scheme, has been the talk of France the last few months. Dozens of cities are in the process of getting on their bikes. A few pioneering cities very quickly realized the usefulness of the bicycle in an urban context: La Rochelle, as early as 1976, Rennes Strasbourg and then Lyon in 2005. But in the last year, the instant success of Velib’ in Paris has greatly expanded the phenomenon.
When the first self-service Velib’ bicycles took to the streets of Paris on July 15 last year, no one imagined that this scheme would be met with such a success. Eight months after its launch, Velib’, the Parisian hire system, already had 19 million users delighted to be able to combine their metro, tram or train journeys with the bicycle.
The system is simple: there is a small charge for bike hire, and all you have to do is pick up a bike at one of the bike stands and drop it off at another once you’ve finished your journey. Most users take a bike for a short distance.
In less than a year, Paris has become the all-round champion among big cities that have adopted this scheme, with 20,600 bikes being brought into service by the end of June and 1,451 bike stands planned for the autumn. The media coverage of its success has resulted in the idea being taken up in lots of other cities, where they are also keen to offer an alternative mode of city transport. As sociologist Yankel Fijalkow stressed in the magazine Sciences Humaines, “The bike is now being seen as a mode of transport in its own right. Lots of people wanted to cycle, but didn’t dare take the first step, because they were afraid of cars or of looking silly. Now cycling is the in thing! Indeed, lots of Parisians have got their old bicycles out of storage.”
In under a year, these self-service bicycle schemes have become all the rage. As they have developed their cycle tracks, some 15 French cities have adopted a self-service hire system which has already put almost 40,000 bicycles into circulation.
After the Velocite’ scheme, introduced by Mulhouse and Besancon, it was the turn of Aix-en-Provence to bring out its red and green V’hello in the autumn. The major Mediterranean port of Marseille, which has a total of 750 bikes at 80 bike stands available to its citizens, has called its scheme simply “le Velo”. Since last winter, Toulouse, Nancy, Amiens, Dijon, Caen, Perpignan, Orleans and Rouen have also set up the bike hire scheme. Nantes had its “Bicloo” since May, and similar projects are on the cards in Le Mans and Valenciennes.
The inhabitants of towns in the inner Paris suburbs are also going to have a chance to get on their bikes. The JCDecaux group, the world’s second largest outdoor advertising corporation, which runs the Paris bicycles, has just been awarded the contract to run bicycle hire schemes in eight towns to the north of Paris. Velib’ will be setting out from the gates of Paris in October.
Now largely outdistanced in France by JCDecaux, it was, however, another leader in this sector, Clear Channel, that was the first to launch a self-service bicycle scheme in France, in Rennes, in 1998. Already running schemes in Vienna, in Brussels, in Seville, and in Luxembourg, JCDecaux has now got the cities in Chicago and Vancouver interested, and projects are being considered in Dublin, as well as in Melbourne.
“These days, France is becoming the benchmark in self-service bicycles,” says a proud Jean-Francois Decaux, who co-directs the family firm. But France does not intend to stop there. To offer city-dwellers the greatest possible range of travel options, next year the city of Paris wants to set up a similar system for hiring clean, hybrid or electric cars, which it might call Autolib.
