Bixi vs. Vélib

There isn't really any competition, but it has little to do with the bike-sharing system and everything to do with the host city. While Montréal seems French in so many ways, it's actually a closeted Dutch city, where biking has become so popular and so mundane that driving almost plays second fiddle. Lots of people use Bixi to get around, but even more appear to have their own bikes and to ride them everywhere. The following video is characteristic - or possible an under-sampling - of the biking scene in the city.

I took this video at 8 AM from our private terrace at L'Auberge de la Fontaine, in the Plateau Mont Royal neighborhood. (The stress of planning and executing a wedding melted away as soon as we arrived at this hotel, the perfect honeymoon home-away-from-home.) After biking the entire length of this bikes-only, protected path later in the day (see map below), Maggie and I only confirmed what we first suspected when I made this video in the morning: we need to move to Montreal.

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Vélib' is Everywhere

Just when you thought you'd seen everything, Vélib' now has bikes in the Seine. Kind of.

On our bateau mouche, no one else seemed particularly taken aback by Vélib's presence, so I looked like a total weirdo jumping up to snap a few pictures as the boat sped by.

Maybe JCDecaux's next troubled business venture can be a boat-sharing program on the Seine. I'd sign up.

Watch Out, Paris

With a week and a half to go before our departure, Maggie finally took a leap of faith and climbed up on a Vélib'.


For a long time, she had been hesitant to ride, in part because Vélib' bikes are heavy and slightly awkward, but more because Parisian traffic can be frighteningly intense. I never worried about either of these things, mostly because I don't have Maggie's common sense and preservation instincts.

Ultimately, Maggie rode one Vélib' to a movie theater nearby, and another one back to our apartment, all without incident. When we go back to Paris, maybe she'll feel more comfortable with the bike and with Parisian traffic. And then . . .

. . . Oh, the places she'll go!

Wear and Tear

One of the major, apparently unanticipated problems with Paris' Vélib' bike-sharing system is that a surprising number of bikes are too damaged to ride. Those who run the program (the City of Paris and advertising company JC Decaux) have been quick to blame disaffected youth from primarily poor and immigrant neighborhoods. To counter the damage, there's now an advertising campaign urging individual responsibility and respect:

Top: "It's easy to beat on a velib - it can't defend itself." Bottom: "16,000 bikes vandalized, 8,000 missing. Velib' belongs to you - protect it!"

It's possible that this ad campaign has worked, and/or the novelty of vandalism has worn off. Most of the damaged bikes I've seen have straightforward problems, like flat tires, discombobulated gear chains, and unbalanced or worn-down brakes. On a message board devoted to complaints about Vélib' an entire thread is devoted to brake problems that could not be the result of vandalism. This suggests that basic wear and tear could be the next big challenge for Vélib's operators to overcome.

Some kinds of wear and tear are unavoidable, while others are extremely avoidable. Am I crazy to suggest that the city's drivers and cyclists would all benefit if Paris finished paving its roads? Hey, Paris - the 19th century called, they want their cobblestone streets back!

Cobblestone streets should only exist in pedestrian-only zones. The sooner Paris lays down some asphalt on the Rue du Faubourg du Temple and other guilty stretches of road, the sooner they'll have bikes in better condition, and the less my brain will bounce around in my head on my way to the library every day.

The Ride Home

Paris is incredibly bike-friendly, and has been since long before the advent of the Vélib' program, which supplies the bikes I ride. Most major streets have some kind of dedicated bike lane, either within the median, cordoned off by a narrow median on the side, or in a shared bus/bike lane. Rue Beaubourg (leading past the Centre Pompidou and to the Hôtel de Ville) is a fine example of the latter:

Did you notice the green and white cyclist symbol painted on the pavement? Anywhere you see that is where cyclists are supposed to be, both for their safety and for smoother traffic flow. There are also bike-specific signs (same colors) on the side of the road, pointing out the most direct way for cyclists to get to big intersections and landmarks. There are even bike-specific traffic lights at cyclists' eye-level, which unfortunately you can't quite make out in this next video (which also shows off bike lanes within the median of a boulevard):

I travel down this bike lane on my way back home from the Médiathèque Gustav Mahler, one of the libraries I've been working at. While normally, bike-riding itself is entertainment enough (especially when there isn't a dedicated bike lane), the boulevards that run along/through Montmartre offer lots of unusual sights. Here's a short narrated tour:

Do I need to do anything else to convince you that Paris is a great city to see by bike?

One of my favorite things

Yesterday, Louis mentioned Velib', Paris' extra-awesome bike-sharing program. Today, I'm going to show/tell you more about it!

This is a photo (above) of a Velib' pick-up/drop-off area at night. This picture was taken just as Paris was rolling out the bike sharing system (15 July 2007, according to Wikipedia). Clearly, the program was a huge success - at this station, ALL the bikes were out and about.

Because we were visiting Paris just as the bikes were being let loose, we often saw trucks full of eager bikes heading to all corners of the city. 

Velib' has certainly caught the attention of folks in other major cities around the world. Just after the launch, Agnes Poirier of The Guardian (UK) mused: "What the philosopher Roland Barthes described as the true epic dimension of cycling can now be experienced by millions of ordinary citizens living in the same city. Setting a different pace of living, these riders create a new harmony, smoothing the rough edges of modernity, taming the flow of the polluting cars around them."

I'm not sure that Parisian drivers can be tamed by anything, but I'm looking forward to riding the streets of Paris on my very own shared bike.