Sep 26, 2007
Daley, Velib, and Me
 A bike from Velib. The word is a play on "velo," which is French for bike, and "liberation," which is the same thing in French and English. |
Apparently, we arrived in Paris on the heels of one Mayor Daley, who was in the City of Lights checking out Velib a couple of weeks ago.
What is Velib? One of the coolest and most frustrating things that I have come across in some time.
Don't worry. Unless you've visited Paris in the past two months, you haven't seen this. It's a citywide bike distribution plan that has been attracting governmental attention worldwide. Basically, the city of Paris contracted JC Decaux (Chicago folks, this is the company behind some of our bus shelters) to design 10,000 bicycles with computer chips. They spread out the bikes throughout hundreds of "bike libraries" throughout the city. The idea is that a Parisian can check out a bike using his or her credit card, ride it across town, and deposit it at any other "bike library." C'est cool, oui?
Oui—and non. The system is incredibly cheap: something like 5 Euros for a week and 30 Euros for the year. But you can only have the bike out for 30 minutes at a time, which means no leisure riding. This is a device for getting from point A to B. That's it.
  We wondered if anybody tended to the stations, since they're unmanned and run by an ATM-like device. Then this purple truck pulled up. I guess they take the bikes in periodically to check tire pressure, chain movement, etc. |
Second, if the check-in spot is full, like ours was tonight, you have to ride around to find another station. Imagine trying to park your car, and all of the neighborhood garages are full, and you get charged if you go over 30 minutes of usage—starting to see the stressful aspect? We went to three stations around 11 o'clock tonight to return the bikes. We found two spots just as I started to panic.
Velib has sparked an interesting discussion for the man friend and me. Is Chicago a sophisticated enough populace to respect a system like this? I can imagine a Chicago punk tinkering with the bike and stealing it, or tampering with the computer chip until it malfunctions. What's more, how would a city like Chicago organize the system? A majority of the population works in the Loop; if everybody rode bicycles to work, where would they park them? In Paris, it seems, things are a little more spread out among the neighborhoods.
What do you think? Do you see something like this in Chicago's future?
Posted at 03:35 PM in Coda | Permalink
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Coda is a blog by arts and culture editor Cassie Walker, who, love it or hate it, always has an opinion. During the course of her weekly culture hunting, she reviews high art and pop culture events so you'll know what you need to check out and what you can miss.
Comments to this blog are moderated. We review them in an effort to remove foul language, commercial messages, and irrelevancies.
Reader Comments:
Fascinating. My first instinct is that Chicagoans would figure out a way to beat the system or screw it up, but who knows? Stranger things have worked.
i would imagine there are "punks" in paris, too.
Is... Chicago... a city of sophisto's....begs the question. The answer, methinks [yet with only 13 months living in 'these here parts']...is that... it is not.
The Velibe IS a nice idea. A smart idea, indeed. It's eco-friendly, provides a modicum of exercise and just makes good sense.
But, can Chicagoans appreciate that?
Nevertheless, it would mean...less cars, less noise, less emissions, & less likely to be run over by a...ahem...neanderthal, running late and on a cellphone.
Hello,
I live in Paris and I am french ( sorry for my english ).
Velib is very popular here. Now they are about 20600 bikes for everybody.
It is necessary to pay attention when you drive because most of people who use Velib do not used bike for a long time ago. So you have to pay attention.
I encourage you has install Velib in your town.
Bye Bye frome Paris
You raise a number of good points. I, too, was just in Paris (last month) and was pleasantly surprised by the Velib bike program. Overall, I think it's wonderful. Regarding a couple of your well taken points, you 'can' take a bike out for longer than 30 minutes - it's just that they start charging you beyond that - 1 euro for the next 30 min, 2 euros for the next 30 min, and 4 euros for subsequent 30 min blocks. Clearly, they want to encourage you to only take short trips. Also, if you try to check the bike into a station that's full, the display tells you where there is the nearest available open slot to return your bike. Of course, it can be frustrating if you go to that location and someone has beat you to that open space! Thanks for your take on how Velib would work for Chicago. Like you,I have posted about Velib on my blog: http://www.greenjoe.com, and I make reference to Chicago near the end of my post. Check it out... www.greenjoe.com
american populace were sophisticated back in the 40's and 50's. now they are just gun toting hoodlums and street thugs...
before you ride a velib, try not spitting chewing gum on your sidewalk and throwing litter.
sophisticated, yeah sure!