Good evening, I came across this exchange about how the French VelLibre bikeshare system held up under the load of a transit strike. Apparently the "LeFigaro" article presented it as crumbling under the load, the onsite reporter doesn't say exactly how it is doing but indicates that it's OK now that things have settled down.

Besides being my main transportation, I consider my bike the best chance of getting to medical treatment if any of my family ever needs it during rush hour :-) Nick

---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: "Michael Wise" mishaweis@gmail.com Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:34:06 +0100

I'm here in Paris. I arrived on the first day of the strike (talk about timing!). Luckily for me I brought my own bike. It has been crazy here: streets are chock full of cars, motorcycles, and bicycles. At first I thought I was witnessing a rabid acceptance of the Velib program: everyone was using those bikes; they were everywhere. Slowly I came to realize that it was just a reaction to the trains being shut down by the strike. It was more like a natural disaster, with people who've relied on a form of transportation suddenly need to find something else, like when the bay bridge collapsed and thousands of commuters needed to find new routes into the city. It took me a couple of days to catch on because there's not much news in English, and where I would normally be using the Metro to get around, I didn't need to because I had my own bike, so I didn't realize the strike was still on.

That being said, there's still some reason to be excited. It has been very cold on a couple of days, but that did not seem to deter anyone. There have also been ladies wearing fine clothes out on bikes, and I've seen lots of old bikes get pressed back into service.

Also, one of the sources listed in the article is the newspaper Le Figaro, which is relatively conservative, and would likely go out of their way to discredit Velib and the strikers both.

On Nov 23, 2007 10:40 PM, Ralph Fertig sb-ralph@cox.net wrote:

What the article doesn't talk much about are all the people who successfully turned to bikes. Any system will most likely stress when demand doubles overnight unexpectedly, especially if it's a different KIND of demand (commute to work). There were problems & complaints, but what was the overall successful service level of the bike sharing system? Out of the 175,000 trips a day, how many customers were dissatisfied? I hope that those figures will eventually become available.

~~ Ralph Fertig ~~ Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition =========

Ralph Fertig received this email from John Boyle on 11/23/07 9:31 AM

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Interesting test of the bikesharing system in Paris

John Boyle Advocacy Director The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia

Paris's bicycle rental system gets a baptism by fire International Herald Tribunehttp://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/22/europe/velib.php

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By Tara Mulholland Thursday, November 22, 2007

*PARIS:* As commuters searched for ways to avoid a paralyzed transport network it should have been a triumph for Vélib', the city's new bicycle rental system.

Instead, as frustrated travelers sought the bikes to beat traffic gridlock, a new wave of frustration began to reverberate: Vélib' rage.

"All the Vélib' places are taken," said Armelle Lalo, a product manager at l'Oréal, who lives in the 15th Arrondissement. "A friend of mine elbowed her way in front of someone to steal the last Vélib' space in a stand this week. She said it was the first time she had ever been rude to a stranger but she didn't care, she didn't have the time to wait."

The very name Vélib', which fuses the word "vélo" (bike) with "liberté," became suspect this week, as record numbers of commuters fought over limited bikes and cycle stands. Le Figaro reported Tuesday that Vélib' rentals in Paris had almost doubled during the strikes, rising from an average of 90,000 bike hires a day to almost 175,000.

The leap created a double predicament, the report said: During the day, Vélib' stands near offices and commercial areas outside the city center are overcrowded, while in central Paris, near major Métro hubs like Châtelet and République, stands are empty. In the evenings, it is the reverse.

"On Saturday, nobody was coming back, all the Vélib' stands were almost empty," said David Delannet, a professor at an American university program in Paris. "When you saw a Vélib' stand that had two bicycles, you'd get there and see that the wheels were broken."

Patchy availability of bikes - and their racks - has led to tension. While cyclists, unable to park and frustrated as their Vélib' meter, which clocks the price by the half-hour, ticks on, rush to grab spaces. Those who have been waiting for bikes to come back to an empty stand explode when people who have prepaid jump ahead in line.

"I had a ticket that I'd bought at a Vélib' stand, which wasn't working," said Sylvia Whitman, manager of a bookstore in the Latin Quarter. "When I found a stand that was working, there was a queue of people waiting to buy their ticket, but no queue for those who already had one. Yet when I went to get a bike everyone started shouting at me, yelling that they'd been waiting for an hour. What are you supposed to do?"

For some, a solution was to ignore the cost and simply take a Vélib' for the week. Across the city the bikes can be seen locked to lampposts and railings, by cyclists who have given up finding a place or want to guarantee their transport home. Others have employed more devious methods: Buying personal bike locks to secure the bikes in their stands, thereby avoiding the charge.

Paris officials were trying to calm irate bike hirers. The City Council has installed emergency stands in some particularly busy areas, including Saint Germain des Prés and Place de la Bourse. With constant usage leading to flat tires and brake problems, 300 workers are servicing the bikes during the strikes; usually there are 200.

Maintenance workers have been instructed to deal efficiently with violations of Vélib' etiquette. "They are on the lookout for any malicious users who try to reserve with a personal lock," warned a bulletin on the Vélib' Web site, Velib.paris.fr. "It will be immediately severed."

For Whitman, meanwhile, even an aggressive Vélib' experience had a positive side. "The strike has renewed my appreciation for Vélib's," she said. "Something that we take for granted every day has been taken away from us, and people who wouldn't normally take a Vélib' are taking them and are so grateful."

For others, cycle rage - and travel distance - has become too much, and they are casting about for new ways to move around. "These past few days I have turned to hitchhiking to get into work," Lalo said. "It's the only way that I can get in on time."

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