Home » Forums » Transportation » Electric Bicycles

France taking the lead on a new program to reduce traffic using Bikes!!!

Tim
Tim's picture

This isn't exactly about electric bikes but is about how one city is taking steps to reduce traffic. This July, Parisians will have an exciting new way to travel around their city. About 1,500 stations stocked with specially designed, vandal-proof bikes will be scattered around the city. Once your membership is paid, and your credit card is on file, the bikes can be borrowed from one station and returned to any other station in the city. Membership ranges from $2 for a day to $40 for a year, and rentals are free for the first 30 minutes. To reduce opportunities for theft, riders will be encouraged to return the bikes to a lock station quickly by incrementally escalating rental fees. The second half hour is $1.30, the third is $2.60 and the price increases from there.

A similar project has been extremely successful in Lyon, where the membership fees are a bit smaller, but biking has been shown to be faster than any other mode of in-city transportation. Lyon's deputy mayor gushes, "It has completely transformed the landscape of Lyon -- everywhere you see people on the bikes."

The mayor of Paris hopes for a similar change. His aide, Jean-Luc Dumesnil says, "we think it could change Paris's image -- make it quieter, less polluted, with a nicer atmosphere, a better way of life." I'm pretty sure that's what we're all looking for. And while the Utopian free-bike movements of the past were a nice idea, technology seems to finally have given bike sharing real life.

Wouldn't a program like this be great in some of the major cities across the US!

‹ bicycles, human power

Submitted by Tim on Tue, 03/27/2007 - 10:41.

Joseph
Joseph's picture
Very Cool Idea

Tim,

Interesting article. I would definitely be interested if they had programs like that in Los Angeles, although the only problem with LA is that it is so vastly spread out that it would depend where I was biking to. I already have a bicycle at home for local commutes, but I could see where this would work out well in a massive congested area such as downtown L.A., Beverly Hills, Pasadena, or some places in the San Fernando Valley. Very cool idea. Something that would be even more useful in a city as spread out as LA would be to do something similar with electric bicycles or electric scooters. That way you could travel further distances and still keep the same ideology in place. The only concern I would have, especially when comparing the U.S. to France, would be the legal implications if someone were injured riding a rented bike or other vehicle. Unfortunately I could potentially see this as a field day for lawyers.

- Joseph


Tue, 03/27/2007 - 14:27