Vélib'
Encyclopedia
is a large-scale public bicycle sharing system in Paris, France. Launched on 15 July 2007, the system has expanded to encompass over 20,000 bicycles and 1,202 bicycle stations, located across Paris and in some surrounding municipalities
. From late 2011, Vélib’ will be complemented by an electric car
sharing scheme operating on similar principles, dubbed Autolib'. Vélib’ is operated as a concession
by JCDecaux
, a major French advertising corporation.
The initiative was proposed by Paris mayor and French Socialist Party
member Bertrand Delanoë
. The system was launched on July 15, 2007, following Lyon
's Vélo'v
success and the pioneering 1974 scheme in La Rochelle
. 7,000 bicycles were initially introduced to the city, distributed among 750 automated rental stations, with fifteen or more bicycle parking slots each. The following year, the initiative was enlarged to some 20,600 bicycles and 1,450 rental stations, with roughly one station every 300 metres (984.3 ft) throughout the city centre, making Vélib the largest system of its kind in the world.
The grey bicycles were produced in Hungary
by the French bicycle company Mercier and are repaired by JCDecaux
. The price per bicycle has been variously stated as US$
500 US$
1,300 (if provided by JCDecaux
), , US$
3,460 or US$
3,500 apiece. They are three-speed bicycle
s, each weighing approximately 22.5 kilograms (50 pounds). Vélib bikes are equipped with always-on LED lighting
powered by a fronthub dynamo
, a locking system and a front bicycle basket
.
If a user arrives with a rented bicycle at a station without open spots, the terminal grants another fifteen minutes of free rental time. The rental terminals also display information about neighbouring Vélib’ stations, including location, number of available bicycles and open stands. A fleet of 23 bicycle-transporting vehicles are used 24/7 to redistribute bicycles between empty and full stations.
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In order to use the system, users need to take out a subscription, which allows the subscriber an unlimited number of rentals. Subscriptions can be purchased at €1.70 per day, €8/week or €29/year. With a subscription, bike rental is free for the first half hour of every individual trip; an unlimited number of such free trips can be made per day. A trip that lasts longer than 30 minutes incurs a charge of €1 to €4 for each subsequent 30-minute period. The increasing price scale is intended to keep the bikes in circulation.
Some stations located above an altitude of 60 metres are called V+. They give any user returning a bicycle from a non-V+ station 15 free minutes of rental: if the rental lasted more than 30 minutes, 15 minutes will be deducted to calculate the amount the user has to pay, meaning that, for example, a 45-minute trip to a V+ station is free. If the rental lasted 30 minutes or less, the 15 minutes are added to a bonus V+ account, and can be used for future rentals exceeding 30 minutes.
A credit card
or debit card
with PIN
is required to sign up for the program and to rent the bikes. The credit/debit card will be charged €150 if a rented bike is not returned. The credit card is required to contain an EMV
chip in most cases. 1-day and 1-week subscribers are given a printed ticket with a subscription number to be used for future rentals during their subscription period, while 1-year subscribers are sent an RFID card. All types of sign-up can also be attached to a Navigo pass instead. The RFID card and Navigo pass allow direct use of the card readers at Vélib stations.
The system is financed by the JCDecaux
advertising corporation, in return for the city of Paris signing over the income from a substantial portion of on-street advertising hoardings
. JCDecaux won the contract over a rival bid from Clear Channel
.
JCDecaux paid the scheme's start-up costs, totalling about $140 million, and employs around 285 people full-time to operate the system and repair the bikes on a ten-year contract. The city receives all revenue from the programme, as well as a fee of about US$4.3 million a year. In return, JCDecaux receives exclusive control over 1,628 city-owned billboards; the city receives about half of that advertising space at no charge for public-interest advertising. (Slightly different numbers were reported in July 2008.) This model was first used in France in 1998 by Adshel (now part of Clear Channel
) in Rennes
.
Due to an unexpectedly high rate of vandalism
compared to the Lyon bicycle hire system, the Paris City Council has agreed to pay replacement costs of $500 per vandalised bicycle, leading to expected costs of up to 2 million euro per year.
River, in shipping containers destined for North Africa, and in cities as far away as Brasov and Bucharest, Romania. On the streets of Paris, it is now commonplace to see Vélib bicycles in their docking stations with flat tires, damaged wheels, missing baskets, and other signs of vandalism.
Officials of JCDecaux have admitted that they underestimated the degree of potential losses from vandalism and theft, a factor which did not significantly affect earlier JCDecaux-administered bike sharing programs such as Vélo'v
in Lyon, France. In Paris, repair efforts are currently running at some 1,500 Vélib bicycles per day, and despite recently introduced security measures, losses from theft continue. Plans to complete a profitability analysis have been postponed until new procedures have been introduced to contain losses, and the program's critics have used the Vélib program as a prime example of the economic principle of the tragedy of the commons
.
At least one sociologist has interpreted the unexpected vandalism losses as a symptom of revolt against French society by the suburban and urban poor, especially immigrant youth gangs resentful of what they perceive as privileged bo-bos or 'bourgeois-bohemians', the trendy French urban middle class that constitute the principal users of the Vélib system. In an ominous allusion to historical Parisian revolutionary history
, some Vélib bicycles have been found vandalised and hanging from lamposts.
Timing differences of up to 30 minutes exist between clocks of different rental stations due to poor synchronisation, and may give rise to overbilling or underbilling. The mayor of Paris has given assurances that overcharges will be reimbursed Rental stations run the Microsoft Windows
operating system, and have been known to crash, giving the infamous blue screen of death
.
Demand can be high during the working week and during transport strikes
. Although rental bicycles are not dedicated, it has been known for people to chain a bicycle to its station so that it will remain available to them for a subsequent trip. Vélib' has declared this to be uncivic behaviour, and Vélib' employees are authorised to cut the locks in these cases.
Stations at greater elevations generally experience greater demand. In addition, there is a net inflow of bicycles from the outskirts to the city centre earlier in the day, and a net flow outwards in the evening. Thus, depending on the time of day, Vélib needs to manage the demand at its outermost and centremost stations. Consequently, bicycles may be completely unavailable in some locations, whilst parking problems exist for others.
Vélib' is faced with logistical issues, and is constantly having to relocate bicycles during the course of the day. There are proposals to make adjustments to the system's pricing mechanism. The "bonus V’+" bonus system was put in place on 14 June 2008 in an effort to adjust the demand level. Fifteen minutes of free cycling time is credited to users who rent bicycles from stations without the logo (mostly situated at the edge of the city and more than 60 m above sea level) and drop bicycles off at stations where the logo is displayed.
Due to continuing high demand, the Vélib' scheme was extended to neighbouring councils (up to 1.5 km from Paris' boundaries) in 2008. 4,000 bicycles have since been distributed to 29 towns on the edges of Paris.
s available for use by the general public, based around 1,120 citywide parking and charging station
s, by late 2012. The cars will be supplied by the industrial group Bolloré
, as the result of a collaboration with Pininfarina
. There are also plans to integrate payment for the bicycle and car hire schemes with the ticketing systems for traditional modes of public transport. Construction of the Autolib' stations began in mid-2011, vehicle testing began in October, and the system's first 250 cars are scheduled to become available to the public on 5 December 2011. 66 of the scheme's Bolloré Blue Car
s were deployed for a two-month preliminary trial period, which began in October 2011.
Municipality
A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...
. From late 2011, Vélib’ will be complemented by an electric car
Electric car
An electric car is an automobile which is propelled by electric motor, using electrical energy stored in batteries or another energy storage device. Electric cars were popular in the late-19th century and early 20th century, until advances in internal combustion engine technology and mass...
sharing scheme operating on similar principles, dubbed Autolib'. Vélib’ is operated as a concession
Concession (contract)
A concession is a business operated under a contract or license associated with a degree of exclusivity in business within a certain geographical area. For example, sports arenas or public parks may have concession stands. Many department stores contain numerous concessions operated by other...
by JCDecaux
JCDecaux
JCDecaux Group is a multinational corporation based in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, that is active primarily in advertising....
, a major French advertising corporation.
History
Socialist Party (France)
The Socialist Party is a social-democratic political party in France and the largest party of the French centre-left. It is one of the two major contemporary political parties in France, along with the center-right Union for a Popular Movement...
member Bertrand Delanoë
Bertrand Delanoë
Bertrand Delanoë is a French politician, and has been the mayor of Paris since 2001. He is member of the Socialist Party . Delanoë was born in Tunis, Tunisia to a French-Tunisian father and a French mother...
. The system was launched on July 15, 2007, following Lyon
Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
's Vélo'v
Vélo'v
Vélo'v is a bicycle rental service run by the city of Lyon, France, in conjunction with the advertising company JCDecaux. The relationship with JCDecaux allows the city to provide the service on a cost neutral basis for the city, and at very low cost to users, in return for providing exclusive...
success and the pioneering 1974 scheme in La Rochelle
La Rochelle
La Rochelle is a city in western France and a seaport on the Bay of Biscay, a part of the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Charente-Maritime department.The city is connected to the Île de Ré by a bridge completed on 19 May 1988...
. 7,000 bicycles were initially introduced to the city, distributed among 750 automated rental stations, with fifteen or more bicycle parking slots each. The following year, the initiative was enlarged to some 20,600 bicycles and 1,450 rental stations, with roughly one station every 300 metres (984.3 ft) throughout the city centre, making Vélib the largest system of its kind in the world.
System
Each Vélib’ station is equipped with an automatic rental terminal and has stands for dozens of bicycles. Maps showing the locations of the city's Vélib stations are available at all kiosks.The grey bicycles were produced in Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
by the French bicycle company Mercier and are repaired by JCDecaux
JCDecaux
JCDecaux Group is a multinational corporation based in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, that is active primarily in advertising....
. The price per bicycle has been variously stated as US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
500 US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
1,300 (if provided by JCDecaux
JCDecaux
JCDecaux Group is a multinational corporation based in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, that is active primarily in advertising....
), , US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
3,460 or US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
3,500 apiece. They are three-speed bicycle
Three-speed bicycle
The three-speed bicycle is a bicycle that uses internal hub gears at the rear wheel hub to provide three gear ratios. Typically, in low gear, the rear sprocket turns faster than the wheel; in middle gear, the rear sprocket turns at the same speed as the wheel; in high gear, the rear wheel turns...
s, each weighing approximately 22.5 kilograms (50 pounds). Vélib bikes are equipped with always-on LED lighting
Bicycle lighting
Bicycle lighting improves the visibility of the bicycle rider to others in dark conditions, i.e. to increase the rider's conspicuity and to enhance the ability of the rider to see, illuminating the way forward. Both reflectors and active lights are used to make the rider more visible, and many ...
powered by a fronthub dynamo
Hub dynamo
A hub dynamo is a small electrical generator built into the hub of a bicycle wheel that is usually used to power lights. Most modern hub dynamos are regulated to 3 watts at 6 volts, although some will drive up to 6 watts at 12 volts.-Models:...
, a locking system and a front bicycle basket
Bicycle basket
A bicycle basket allows a bicycle rider to carry cargo or objects without using their hands. Baskets on children's bicycles and some utility bicycles are often mounted to the front handle bars and are made of wire mesh, wicker, or woven plastic...
.
If a user arrives with a rented bicycle at a station without open spots, the terminal grants another fifteen minutes of free rental time. The rental terminals also display information about neighbouring Vélib’ stations, including location, number of available bicycles and open stands. A fleet of 23 bicycle-transporting vehicles are used 24/7 to redistribute bicycles between empty and full stations.
Rates
Some stations located above an altitude of 60 metres are called V+. They give any user returning a bicycle from a non-V+ station 15 free minutes of rental: if the rental lasted more than 30 minutes, 15 minutes will be deducted to calculate the amount the user has to pay, meaning that, for example, a 45-minute trip to a V+ station is free. If the rental lasted 30 minutes or less, the 15 minutes are added to a bonus V+ account, and can be used for future rentals exceeding 30 minutes.
A credit card
Credit card
A credit card is a small plastic card issued to users as a system of payment. It allows its holder to buy goods and services based on the holder's promise to pay for these goods and services...
or debit card
Debit card
A debit card is a plastic card that provides the cardholder electronic access to his or her bank account/s at a financial institution...
with PIN
Personal identification number
A personal identification number is a secret numeric password shared between a user and a system that can be used to authenticate the user to the system. Typically, the user is required to provide a non-confidential user identifier or token and a confidential PIN to gain access to the system...
is required to sign up for the program and to rent the bikes. The credit/debit card will be charged €150 if a rented bike is not returned. The credit card is required to contain an EMV
EMV
EMV stands for Europay, MasterCard and VISA, a global standard for inter-operation of integrated circuit cards and IC card capable point of sale terminals and automated teller machines , for authenticating credit and debit card transactions.It is a joint effort between Europay, MasterCard and...
chip in most cases. 1-day and 1-week subscribers are given a printed ticket with a subscription number to be used for future rentals during their subscription period, while 1-year subscribers are sent an RFID card. All types of sign-up can also be attached to a Navigo pass instead. The RFID card and Navigo pass allow direct use of the card readers at Vélib stations.
| time | rate |
|---|---|
| 30 min | free |
| 1 h | €1 |
| 1 h 30 | €3 |
| 2 h | €7 |
| 5 h | €31 |
| 10 h | €71 |
| 20 h | €151 |
Financing
JCDecaux
JCDecaux Group is a multinational corporation based in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, that is active primarily in advertising....
advertising corporation, in return for the city of Paris signing over the income from a substantial portion of on-street advertising hoardings
Billboard (advertising)
A billboard is a large outdoor advertising structure , typically found in high traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertisements to passing pedestrians and drivers...
. JCDecaux won the contract over a rival bid from Clear Channel
Clear channel
A clear-channel station is an AM band Radio station in North America that has the highest protection from interference from other stations, particularly concerning night-time skywave propagation. Usually known as class A stations since 1982, they are occasionally still referred to by their former...
.
JCDecaux paid the scheme's start-up costs, totalling about $140 million, and employs around 285 people full-time to operate the system and repair the bikes on a ten-year contract. The city receives all revenue from the programme, as well as a fee of about US$4.3 million a year. In return, JCDecaux receives exclusive control over 1,628 city-owned billboards; the city receives about half of that advertising space at no charge for public-interest advertising. (Slightly different numbers were reported in July 2008.) This model was first used in France in 1998 by Adshel (now part of Clear Channel
Clear channel
A clear-channel station is an AM band Radio station in North America that has the highest protection from interference from other stations, particularly concerning night-time skywave propagation. Usually known as class A stations since 1982, they are occasionally still referred to by their former...
) in Rennes
Rennes
Rennes is a city in the east of Brittany in northwestern France. Rennes is the capital of the region of Brittany, as well as the Ille-et-Vilaine department.-History:...
.
Due to an unexpectedly high rate of vandalism
Vandalism
Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...
compared to the Lyon bicycle hire system, the Paris City Council has agreed to pay replacement costs of $500 per vandalised bicycle, leading to expected costs of up to 2 million euro per year.
Theft and vandalism
At least 3,000 bicycles were stolen in the first year of operation, a number far greater than had been initially anticipated. As of August 2009, of 20,600 bikes introduced into service, about 16,000—some 80% of the total—have been replaced due to vandalism or theft; of the latter, fully 8,000 were stolen. Stolen Vélib bicycles have turned up in the SeineSeine
The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...
River, in shipping containers destined for North Africa, and in cities as far away as Brasov and Bucharest, Romania. On the streets of Paris, it is now commonplace to see Vélib bicycles in their docking stations with flat tires, damaged wheels, missing baskets, and other signs of vandalism.
Officials of JCDecaux have admitted that they underestimated the degree of potential losses from vandalism and theft, a factor which did not significantly affect earlier JCDecaux-administered bike sharing programs such as Vélo'v
Vélo'v
Vélo'v is a bicycle rental service run by the city of Lyon, France, in conjunction with the advertising company JCDecaux. The relationship with JCDecaux allows the city to provide the service on a cost neutral basis for the city, and at very low cost to users, in return for providing exclusive...
in Lyon, France. In Paris, repair efforts are currently running at some 1,500 Vélib bicycles per day, and despite recently introduced security measures, losses from theft continue. Plans to complete a profitability analysis have been postponed until new procedures have been introduced to contain losses, and the program's critics have used the Vélib program as a prime example of the economic principle of the tragedy of the commons
Tragedy of the commons
The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this...
.
At least one sociologist has interpreted the unexpected vandalism losses as a symptom of revolt against French society by the suburban and urban poor, especially immigrant youth gangs resentful of what they perceive as privileged bo-bos or 'bourgeois-bohemians', the trendy French urban middle class that constitute the principal users of the Vélib system. In an ominous allusion to historical Parisian revolutionary history
La Lanterne
La Lanterne was a stout lamp post at the corner of a street in Paris used by mobs during the French Revolution for extemporised lynchings and referred to in such emblematic songs as Ah! ça ira....
, some Vélib bicycles have been found vandalised and hanging from lamposts.
Maintenance
One issue that has arisen is how to safeguard riders from hiring a returned Vélib cycle that was damaged by a prior user or is in need of immediate maintenance. To indicate when there is a problem with the bike, it has become common for returning users to rotate the seat through 180 degrees so that it is pointing backwards. While this practice assists staff in determining which bikes require immediate attention, it depends for its success on substantial voluntary compliance from users.Timing differences of up to 30 minutes exist between clocks of different rental stations due to poor synchronisation, and may give rise to overbilling or underbilling. The mayor of Paris has given assurances that overcharges will be reimbursed Rental stations run the Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
operating system, and have been known to crash, giving the infamous blue screen of death
Blue Screen of Death
To forse a BSOD Open regedit.exe,Then search: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\i8042prt\ParametersThen make a new DWORD called "CrashOnCtrlScroll" And set the value to 1....
.
Demand
There are frequent disparities between the availability of rental bicycles and the number of rental slots. Each rental station indicates the number of bicycles available at the nearest stations.Demand can be high during the working week and during transport strikes
Industrial action
Industrial action or job action refers collectively to any measure taken by trade unions or other organised labour meant to reduce productivity in a workplace. Quite often it is used and interpreted as a euphemism for strike, but the scope is much wider...
. Although rental bicycles are not dedicated, it has been known for people to chain a bicycle to its station so that it will remain available to them for a subsequent trip. Vélib' has declared this to be uncivic behaviour, and Vélib' employees are authorised to cut the locks in these cases.
Stations at greater elevations generally experience greater demand. In addition, there is a net inflow of bicycles from the outskirts to the city centre earlier in the day, and a net flow outwards in the evening. Thus, depending on the time of day, Vélib needs to manage the demand at its outermost and centremost stations. Consequently, bicycles may be completely unavailable in some locations, whilst parking problems exist for others.
Vélib' is faced with logistical issues, and is constantly having to relocate bicycles during the course of the day. There are proposals to make adjustments to the system's pricing mechanism. The "bonus V’+" bonus system was put in place on 14 June 2008 in an effort to adjust the demand level. Fifteen minutes of free cycling time is credited to users who rent bicycles from stations without the logo (mostly situated at the edge of the city and more than 60 m above sea level) and drop bicycles off at stations where the logo is displayed.
Due to continuing high demand, the Vélib' scheme was extended to neighbouring councils (up to 1.5 km from Paris' boundaries) in 2008. 4,000 bicycles have since been distributed to 29 towns on the edges of Paris.
Autolib' car sharing scheme
On a similar basis to the Velib' scheme, Paris plans to offer a car sharing program called Autolib'. Autolib' will make around 3,000 small electric carElectric car
An electric car is an automobile which is propelled by electric motor, using electrical energy stored in batteries or another energy storage device. Electric cars were popular in the late-19th century and early 20th century, until advances in internal combustion engine technology and mass...
s available for use by the general public, based around 1,120 citywide parking and charging station
Charging station
An electric vehicle charging station, also called EV charging station, electric recharging point, charging point and EVSE , is an element in an infrastructure that supplies electric energy for the recharging of electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric-gasoline vehicles) or semi-static and mobile...
s, by late 2012. The cars will be supplied by the industrial group Bolloré
Bolloré
Bolloré is a French investment and industrial holding group headquartered in Puteaux, on the western outskirts of Paris, France. The company, a paper-energy-plantations-logistics conglomerate, employs 28,000 people around the world....
, as the result of a collaboration with Pininfarina
Pininfarina
Pininfarina S.p.A. is an Italian car design firm and coachbuilder in Cambiano, Italy.Founded as Società anonima Carrozzeria Pinin Farina in 1930 by automobile designer and builder Battista "Pinin" Farina, Pininfarina has been employed by a wide variety of high-end automobile manufacturers,...
. There are also plans to integrate payment for the bicycle and car hire schemes with the ticketing systems for traditional modes of public transport. Construction of the Autolib' stations began in mid-2011, vehicle testing began in October, and the system's first 250 cars are scheduled to become available to the public on 5 December 2011. 66 of the scheme's Bolloré Blue Car
Bolloré Blue Car
The Bolloré Blue Car is a small electric car designed by the battery manufacturer batScap, a joint venture between Bolloré and EDF from Quimper, France....
s were deployed for a two-month preliminary trial period, which began in October 2011.