Vélib'

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In 2007, the city of Paris decided to encourage people to use alternate, non-polluting forms of transportation by establishing an enormous network of hundreds of stations throughout the city at which anyone could rent a bicycle for nothing (or almost nothing) and ride it from one place to another. The project has been a huge success for a significant segment of the population, although die-hard automobile drivers continue to drive their SUVs around town.

Renting a bicycle is simple by French standards of bureaucracy but still complicated by more modern standards. It's supposedly possible for tourists to obtain one-week passes for renting the bicycles with a credit card; residents typically fill out a standard French story-of-my-life paper application, wait for a magic card to arrive in the mail, authorize automatic funds transfer, yadda yadda yadda … and can eventually do the same thing, for renewable periods of one year.

The first half-hour of rental is free, and additional time is charged at a very low rate. Thus, potentially, the system shouldn't cost anything if your trips between Vélib' stations are short. The bikes are designed for sturdiness and safety, and therefore weigh an extraordinary 55 pounds. They have bright headlights, a basket, multiple speeds, etc. The popularity of the system continues to grow, and on any given street at just about any time of day, you'll see people passing on Vélib' bicycles.

A continuing problem is distribution of bicycles. At some locations, there are hardly any bicycles to rent; at other locations, there are tons of bicycles to rent, but very few spots to park the bicycles. Trucks drive around the city each day redistributing the bicycles. Eventually it should be possible to figure out how many bicycles to put at each station, based on traffic patterns.

This photo was taken at a station in Pigalle.

Photographed on July 13, 2008.