Paris bikes beat congestion

Public bicycle rental may be a way to make the city's streets cleaner and quieter
Mar 31, 2007 04:30 AM
John Ward Anderson
The Washington Post

PARIS–Paris is for lovers – lovers of food and art and wine, lovers of the romantic sort and, starting this summer, lovers of bicycles.

On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance the city's image as a greener, quieter, more relaxed place.

By the end of the year, organizers and city officials say, there should be 20,600 bikes at 1,450 stations – or about one station every 250 yards across the entire city. Based on experience elsewhere – particularly in Lyon, France's third-largest city, which launched a similar system two years ago – regular users of the bikes will ride them almost for free.

Anthonin Darbon, director of Cyclocity, which operates Lyon's program and won the contract to start up and run the one in Paris, said 95 per cent of the roughly 20,000 daily bike rentals in Lyon are free because of their length.

Cyclocity is a subsidiary of outdoor advertising behemoth JCDecaux, which runs much smaller bike businesses in Brussels, Vienna and the Spanish cities of Cordoba and Girona. London, Dublin, Sydney and Melbourne reportedly are considering similar rental programs.