General Cycling Discussion - French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality

How sad that we Europeans are still allowing our civilized world to be overrun by people who have no concept of our values.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/world/europe/31bikes.html?_r=2&hpw

Reading that is one of these "What were they thinking?" experiences. The way you keep people from stealing bikes is to use $50 bikes, not $3,500 bikes. Sheesh.

How many threads are we going to have of this?

In the thread in Commuting,
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=599010

there's this post:
http://www.bikeforums.net/showpost.php?p=9961163&postcount=10

Makes sense, unfortunately.

More at: http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/02/12/reports-of-velibs-demise-greatly-exaggerated/

How sad that we Europeans are still allowing our civilized world to be overrun by people who have no concept of our values.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/world/europe/31bikes.html?_r=2&hpw

Not sure who you are referring to, however from the article it sounds like it's a socio-economic issue. From my experiences, lack of respect towards items of value to others stems from a bad upbringing. Some people fully understand the concept of needing to "be" respected, but they don't see the need to respect others.

Saw a similar movement in Holland back in the early 90's, only these didn't even require payment. They just repaired a ton of Dutch city bikes, painted them an outrageous yellow and put them all over town--no locks, no nothing. It was a pretty neat deal, especially if you're a tourist with a free morning.
But I saw signs of the program's demise when kids with multiple facial piercings began commandeering them, covering the yellow paint (sort of) with stickers or other paint, or just chucking them in the canals.
It was a little bit of a relief to see it fail actually; I felt like a lower form of life seeing such civic benevolence in Europe. "Something like this would NEVER work in the states!"

In NYC USA, some people have instituted the Yellow Bike program. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX4eKV_Omw4 You can borrow a Yellow Bike for free.

The problem in France is white anarchists with no respect for their country, and Muslim (arab etc) terrorists whose goal is to dominate France and convert it forcefully into a Muslim country. They will destroy bikes, cars, houses, and parliaments, but boohoo and claim it is "rebellion" against "racism" or "oppression." The sick jokers MOVED TO FRANCE on their own time.