Paris Woos Cyclists as Free Bike Scheme Takes Off

This year’s Tour de France may have been ruined by doping scandals but a new city bike scheme has ensured two-wheeled transport has rarely been more popular on the streets of the French capital.

The “Velib” — short for “free bike” — programme launched in Paris this month has been a runaway success for Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, allowing thousands of Parisians and visitors to leave their cars at home to pedal to work or to the shops.
Similar systems exist in other European countries, as city administrations struggle to ease both traffic gridlock and air pollution, but the French capital has the most ambitious scheme.

Some 616,000 users have signed up to be able to pick up bikes at more than 750 points in Paris for daily subscriptions of one euro.

Paris is unlikely ever to rival classic bicycling cities like Amsterdam. But Velib is a revolution in a city with a vast metro network but an increasingly choked road system, where bicycling has long been looked on with suspicion.

Some 10,000 bikes are already in place and the scheme is set to double in size by the end of the year to include around 20,000 bikes and 1,450 pick up points, one every 300 metres.

Planet Ark