I ran across an interesting City initiative to alleviate the automobile’s stronghold on transportation, reduce traffic and pollution and raise healthiness and happiness! The name comes from the combination of ‘Velo’ which means bike and ‘Libre’ which means freedom - BIKE FREEDOM. The idea behind the program is the City will provide shared bicycles at a low cost to the public. The program costs a small amount to start and trips under 30 minutes are free. The program now includes 20,000 bikes at 1,500 stations which means that you are never more than 300 yards from a Velibe bike station. The cost of the program includes the maintenance on the bikes and the stations. The City progressively approached JC Decaux, which is the largest advertiser in the world, and they agreed to do all the maintenance on the bikes and the stations if they were allowed to advertise at each of the stations. This is worth approximately $60 million to JC Decaux to advertise at these new outposts. As part of their maintenance program, they have used ‘clean fuel’ trucks to move bikes from overpopulated station to bring them to maintenance (they have a computer tracking the usage from each station). The maintenance is actually done on a barge that floats on the Seine River so they are mobile and don’t require rent.
It is a wonderful initiative that is the first program in the world of its kind. The program has doubled bike usage in the City - up to 2% of all commuter trips. It has spurred programs in London, Sao Paolo, Venice and Montreal here in Canada. The only downfalls thus far have been some theft and purposeful hard use and vandalism due to a lack of perceived ownership.
The program has created a new social network in Paris and inevitably in any City in which it is implemented. We should urge the City of Vancouver to become one of these leading progressive Cities that implement a program such as this. Let Gregor Robertson know we want this - it’s a small cost to fundamentally change habits!
Paris is also starting a similar program called Autolibe which will be a car sharing network of a similar nature that will be non-petroleum powered cars for short trip use. I have seen a battery powered fold-up car from MIT that is a prototype - really cool!
The TV program I saw this on was called E2 (squared) - the Economies of being Environmentally Conscious - it’s a weekly PBS program on channel 5 (the Knowledge Network) that is narrated by the hunky Brad Pitt :). Watch it, you will learn something and maybe get motivated!
Kevin
A great post and a great program. This has utterly changed the centre of Paris. Being Paris, you don’t see a lot of spandex; these are stylish riders.