Velibs

Now that bikes are my primary mode of transportation, I've really begun to appreciate them. And of all the cities in the world, Paris is one of the most bicycle friendly. We all know about the price of gas and all that jazz, and so bikes are becoming more and more popular. So much so that Paris has recently implemented a new program called "Velib."

"Velib" is a cross between two words - "velo" meaning bike and "liberte" or freedom... so "bike freedom" or "free bike" is what this translates to. Its basically a rental program that was launched last summer.

Now a brief history of this "community bike" program... basically, back in the 60's a group of hippies tried to start a kinda free bike program in which they bought a bunch of bikes and painted them white and left them all over the city. The idea was that you would take a bike, ride it where you needed to go, and leave it somewhere for someone else to ride. The problem was that white bikes can just be painted to look like blue bikes and be sold or scrapped or whatever. So it ended up not working.

Paris (according to Franz) is the first city to do it right for several reasons:

• they have enough bikes for the amount of people who want to use them (over 20,000)
• they are readily available all over the city (1,450 docking stations)
• they are very distinctive looking (a velib will always look like a velib no matter what you do to it)

The program works like this: you subscribe to this program (for about 29 euros a year), and then you have an unlimited amount of rentals. Now to prevent you from stealing a bike, you have to insert your credit card into the machine for each use. The first 30 minute ride is free (with a subscription), the next 30 mins is 1 euro, the next 30 mins is 3 euros... once you hit 10 hours its 71 euros.

Now the other cool thing is that the bikes have little computer chips in them that not only report how many minutes YOU have ridden it, but also how many hours its been riden in total. Once a velib has been riden 20 hours, you can no longer check it back out and the city will come and pick the bike up to service it. So all the bikes are in good shape.

Finally, do you know how the whole project was funded? An advertising company paid for the entire thing for exclusive rights to all the public billboards in Paris. Pretty cool deal if I must say so myself.

So all that being said, I see these bikes all the time... they're pretty funky looking, but so is my beach cruiser.