By Siegfried Mortkowitz, IANS
Paris : the landscape of Paris underwent a radical transformation as 10,000 bicycles became available to the city’s residents and visitors in an innovative programme initiated by Mayor Bertrand Delanoe.
Since then, an estimated two million bikes have been rented and ridden over more than four million km in what has become a very visible and popular subculture of the French capital. And the number of bicycles available has been increased to 14,000, to meet the growing demand.
By mid September, more than 53,000 Parisians had taken out a year’s subscription for Velib – which is the name of the project, taken from the French words “velo,” bicycle, and “libre,” free. No data is available for those who simply rent a bicycle by the day, whenever they need or want one.
The programme enables cyclists to pick up a bicycle at any one of more than 800 stations around the city, ride it to work, to a concert, or simply for pleasure, and then drop it off at any station.
To ride one of the sturdy, beige two-wheelers for one day costs one euro (currently about $1.36), while a year’s subscription goes for 29 euros. If you manage to complete your journey in 30 minutes or less, the trip will not cost you a centime.
Small wonder the idea has caught on. Not only have the bikes become an integral part of the city’s infrastructure but they have changed the way Parisians live.
“I take a bike to and from work every day,” said Marianne, a woman in her early 50s. “It not only saves me time, but it has also given me far more freedom. I go out a lot more often than I used to, just because I can ride a bicycle.”
The Velib bicycles have in fact become a popular mode of transport for the Parisian social life, with one-third of the bike use taking place between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.
This being France, the bicycles have also spawned a new language. Those using the bicycles regularly are referred to as velibeurs (male) and velibistes (female).
The dynamic young executives who ride the bikes to and from work are referred to as velibobos. And the catch all term for the all-too-frequent snags in the system is velimerde.
And the system being new, there has been plenty of velimerde.
One problem is the propensity of residents of neighbourhoods in northern and northeastern Paris, which are uphill from the city centre, to ride a bike downtown and then take public transport back to avoid the strenuous uphill slog.
This has often left many stations in the north and northeast of the city short of bikes and made it difficult to find a place to drop off the two-wheeler downtown.
In addition, the daily Liberation reported, police have been very vigilant about regulating the behaviour of the thousands of new cyclists on the crowded Paris streets.
One velibeur named Cyril told the newspaper: “I was hit with a 90-euro ($122) fine last week when I rode through a red light on the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle (in central Paris). It was a Velib trap. There were about 10 of us in the same boat.”
But the popularity of the bicycles has made it virtually certain that they will remain a fixture of the Paris cityscape for years to come.
And the mayor has already promised another wrinkle on the concept for the end of the year: small non-polluting automobiles that can be rented in the same way.