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Easy bike hire for Londoners
Mayor wants London to copy Paris bike rentals By Ross Lydall, Evening
Standard 09.08.07 Add your view Ken Livingstone is considering a plan to offer thousands of bikes for rent for short trips across central London. The Mayor is keen to copy the Parisian idea of providing 10,000 self- service cycles that can be unlocked from racks and used for up to 30 minutes at a time. He saw the scheme for himself first hand when he joined the city's mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, for the final stage of the Tour de France last month and has now asked Transport for London officials to investigate. Since being introduced in the French capital three weeks ago, the Vélib (short for free or freedom-bikes in French) project has surprised cynics with its popularity. The heavy grey bikes are available from 750 places, many near rail and metro stations, for a one euro (65p) fee for each half-hour of cycling. They have been hired 1.2 million times - each being used six times a day. Subscribers to the scheme must pay ¤29 (£20) a year, give their credit card details and leave a ¤150 credit card deposit. They are given a card to unlock the bikes from automated stations. The Mayor, who boasts that cycling has increased by 83 per cent in London since he came to power, with about 450,000 journeys a day, is keen to maintain the momentum of travellers switching to two wheels. He is holding a London Freewheel event next month, which will close miles of the capital's streets on a Sunday to encourage nervous cyclists back on their bikes, and sees it as one way of reducing emissions and improving the health of Londoners. TfL has reportedly been asked to look at a city-wide scheme that would link the several small-scale ventures already in place and roll them out on a grander scale. Former cabbie Bernie Hanning co-founded OYbikes three years ago, which operates from locations including Hammersmith, Fulham and West Kensington. Cyclists hire a bike free for 30 minutes after paying an initial £10 registration fee and phone the OYBike call centre to get the code to unlock the bike. Another scheme in Tower Hamlets encourages employers with tax benefits to provide pooled bikes for staff. Dave Holladay, a veteran cycling enthusiast who advises the CTC, the national cycling organisation, welcomed the large-scale scheme. But he said previous attempts had failed due to the opposition of rail companies to provide space for bike racks. He told The Times: "It takes no more than 15 minutes to get to any central London terminus by bike, so there could be huge benefits for the city." However, in Paris, commuters from high-level areas such as Montmartre have taken to riding the bikes downhill to work but not the tough return journey. Vandals have also damaged bikes. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/a...als/article.do |
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Easy bike hire for Londoners
In case of theft, a deposit's paid on the card so if you're registered
as the last user you get billed I suppose. I can't think of many places in The City for racks to go. Plus, you can walk from one end of Paris to the other fairly quickly- I remeber a DW when we walked from the Eiffel Tower to the hotel in The Marais. Couldn't do that in London- and say a rack is in The City, would the others be way out in Zone 3 or just around the West End? |
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Easy bike hire for Londoners
spindrift wrote:
in Paris, commuters from high-level areas such as Montmartre have taken to riding the bikes downhill to work but not the tough return journey. I wonder if the scheme could be enhanced to give you a discount off your annual fee for taking a bike from a low-level to a high-level area. Rob |
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Easy bike hire for Londoners
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Easy bike hire for Londoners
The French version:
The local authority in Paris has deposited 20,000 heavy-duty bicycles in 750 or so special racks around the city and anyone who wants one simply swipes his or her ordinary travel card and pedals off wherever they want to go. The bike does not have to be returned to the same pick-up point - you can take a bike from a rack near the Eiffel Tower, cycle to the Pantheon and leave it in the nearest Velib stand there. Mathieu Fierling, the deputy director of the scheme, believes it will suit Parisians and tourists alike. Bicycles will just be very useful for those people going to do some shopping or visiting friends, not far from home, but most of the time when you use the car it's for a long trip so that's the reason why it will not solve at all the traffic problem in Paris Christian Gerondeau President of federation of auto clubs "We've set things up so that the same card can be used for public transport and for Velib. You can set up a subscription for just one day or for a whole week and the subscription fee is minimal - one euro ($1.38; £0.68) to anyone who wants a one-off go or 29 euros ($40; £20) for a year's subscription." The Velib scheme is aimed at people who are making short journeys. The first half hour of pedalling time is absolutely free but, if you fail to return the bike after 30 minutes, you get charged an extra euro and the penalties go up the later you are. Paris city hall expects to have about 20,000 regular Velib users by the end of the year and plans to double the amount of Velib stations dotted around Paris. A travel card will be used to hire the bikes The bikes do not come with cycling helmets but Mathieu Fierling insists safety is a priority for the Paris authorities. "The city council has launched a big campaign on bike safety. Every subscriber to the Velib scheme will receive a leaflet with safety advice. There have also been big efforts over the last few years to set up cycle routes around the city. We hope that all this means there will be as few accidents as possible." But can the Parisians be persuaded by pedal power? The Tour de France marks out the French as a cycling-loving nation but in Paris, a city of two million people - and nearly 12 million in the metropolitan area - only 150,000 own bikes. The Velib scheme has already worked well in Lyon. |
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Easy bike hire for Londoners
On 9 Aug, 13:15, spindrift wrote:
The French version: snip That article dated from the days before the launch and was similar to one the Times published in the UK. Both had a relatively negative take on the idea and included the key quote from the president of the Paris Auto Club. The evidence to date is that despite a few teething problems (Certain stands are frequently full and it can be necessary to hunt for an empty space) the system is popular. The popular estimates are that 2/3rds of the bikes seen on the streets of Paris are Vélib ones. Assuming that existing bike owners aren't choosing to leave theirs at home, that equates to a substantial increase in cycling. It remains to be seen how that lasts. Jon |
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