Parisian bike culture experiment

[OneEye]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/getaways/07/16/paris.bicycles.ap/index.html

An interesting bike rental scheme in Paris.  The mayor is trying to create a biking culture similar to Copenhagen or the Netherlands.

[myelectricbike]

I've heard they tried this in Portland and maybe Seattle and some other places. I heard that when they tried it in Tampa they started with about 300 bikes painted bright florescent orange. By the end of the first day no bikes had been returned.  Over the next several weeks and months people began seeing bikes with frames of one color and forks painted... you guessed it! bright florescent orange. Since Tampa is the 7th largest port in the USA (or was at one time) and conducts most of its business with South America I imagine that any bike parts that did not find a home in Tampa found a home in South America. Good luck Paris!

[OneEye]

To rent the bike (it's something like a daily/weekly or yearly metro pass) you have to preauthorize a charge to cover the bike's cost if it is not returned.  Hard to say if they will be brute-forced out of their parking stand/rental units.

-Mike

[myelectricbike]

My understanding is that the other side of the coin on this is that systems which charged a fee for usage found that the usage never met expectations due to the existence of the fee therefore requiring the fee to be raised higher resulting in even less usage to the point where financial equilibrium could not be established so as to be able for the system to sustain itself financially and consequently in need of public funding, which was eventually withdrawn during budget cuts, etc. 

[OneEye]

Ah, but this is a socialist mayor, so the whole thing will be HIGHLY subsidized.  Breaking even or making a profit probably isn't a consideration.

This guy also ripped out a lane of traffic on many already congested roads in order to install bike lanes.  We'll see if his plan works or not.

[myelectricbike]

Geez... I read somewhere that they did the opposite in China in order to accommodate more cars the elated parking spaces.  My head is spinning.