A green dream dies as 7,800 eco bicycles vanish in Paris
The self-service bikes, which can be hired for as little as €1, have been hurled in rivers and hung from tree
Wednesday February 11 2009
It was hailed by environmentalists as the ideal solution to congestion on the streets. But life is now proving short for the Velib, the self-service bicycle that the city of Paris introduced 18 months ago.
So far, 7,800 of the "damage-resistant" grey bicyclettes -- which can be hired for €1 per half hour -- have vanished, while 11,600 have been vandalised, their operating company said.
Hung from trees, thrown in the river or shipped to foreign parts, the Velib bikes have met much more aggressive treatment than expected since the first of the 20,000 of them were docked at their 1,250 stations.
The damage has forced JC Decaux, the advertising company that supplies them to the city, to replace most of the original bicycles at a cost of more than €400 each.
"We underestimated the degree of damage that they would suffer," said Albert Asseraf, the marketing director of JC Decaux. The scale of the Paris problems has not been encountered in Lyon, where there were only 4,000 bikes.
extreme
Many were being stolen because tourists and first-time users were not docking them properly when they returned them to their computerised stations, Mr Asseraf said.
Some bikes have turned up in eastern Europe and Africa.
The cycles have also fallen victim to a new craze called Velib Extreme. Young riders use them for stunts which they film and post on the internet, set to rock music. These stunts include fast descents down the long stairs of the Montmartre hill, and jumps. The most common vandalism reported is tyre-slashing.
So far, five people have been killed on the bikes.
The high-tech scheme has started opening in 29 surrounding boroughs. It is also being copied by overseas cities, including London, San Francisco and Singapore.
Under pressure from JC Decaux, the city has recently agreed to pay for a proportion of the destroyed and stolen machines. JC Decaux had complained that the city was making all the money from the rentals -- €20m in the first year -- while the operating firm was bearing all the costs.
hnews@herald.ie
- Charles Bremner
