French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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.
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).
Perhaps I am wrong about that.
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.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bjelkeman/2436951384/in/set-721...
It would be much more interesting to get a European perspective.
No problems at all. Occasionally you found a knackered one, but it looked like wear and tear rather than vandalism. It's a superb idea.
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..."
In Milan (Italy) works very well
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)
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.
The bicycles look so special that stealing them is probably not very tempting. Vandalism might still be a problem, though.
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.
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.
So, I presume you don't mean me when you say "you".
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.
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)...
Anyone from the Bay area have any feedback?
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.
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?
There's Lamborghini tractors, too! http://www.lamborghini-tractors.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bus_types_used_in_Londo...
(Not to dispute your main point though. The buses here seem to last pretty well.)
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.
Wikipedia: 'The price per bicycle has been variously stated as US$1,300 (if provided by JCDecaux), €300, or US$3,460 apiece'.
300 euro seems like a reasonable price for just the bicycle itself, the other figures must include other costs. Also, let's not forget that the scheme is subsidized by giving JCDecaux a monopoly on a lot of advertising space in the city, so even at a high cost it may still be profitable to them.
Though, 1300$ does sound more reasonable.
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.)
We have this free bicycle rental service: Bike Around Downtown https://www.bikearounddowntown.com/Default.aspx
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.
> 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...