I was reading a BikePortland story yesterday about the Velib system, and was dismayed to hear that the operator, advertising company JCDecaux, had recently stated the system was in dire straits. To quote the original BBC story:

Remi Pheulpin, JCDecaux’s director general, says the current contract is unsustainable. “It’s simple. All the receipts go to the city. All the expenses are ours,” he said.

The costs, he said, were “so high that a private business cannot handle it alone, espcially as it’s a problem of public order. If we want the velib set-up to keep going, we’ll have to change the business model,”

And yes, there is some mistreatment of Velib bikes going on. And that should be expected! When these bikes have been used for 42 million trips, not all of them are going to be gentle.

Now, the real truth here seems to be that ad revenues are down all over the place because of the worldwide economic troubles, and JCDecaux is really making some kind of political play to get more money from the city. Streetsblog agrees, saying:

So is Vélib destined to burn brightly only to flare out after a short time? Hardly. Vélib is here to stay, according to officials and transportation experts familiar with the details of its operations. The BBC’s portrayal of a mortal threat, they say, is best understood as a negotiating ploy on the part of JCDecaux. (Note that the JCDecaux representative is the only source quoted in that story.)

“Decaux is using media sensationalism in order to obtain more money from the city of Paris,” said Denis Baupin, who as Deputy Mayor for Transportation oversaw the Vélib launch in the summer of 2007.

Nevertheless, we think there are a few things that Velib could learn from Austin CarShare about operations. Both Elliott and I were directly involved in starting Austin CarShare, Austin’s non-profit carshare service.

First and foremost seems to be the issue of mishandling the bicycles and theft. While Velib customers currently pay a 150-euro deposit, they apparently aren’t billed for damages incurred while their bicycle is checked out. They should be. Since a credit card is swiped each time a bike is taken, it should be easy to find which person stole a bicycle or failed to lock one up correctly, which person has abused a bike, and bill them accordingly!

Secondly, it seems that JCDecaux is not taking the real operating costs of their system into account. While the actual rate of incidents is low, the initial deposit should perhaps be made to better reflect that damages that the bikes are incurring. Since it’s only a bicycle, it might not even be bad to make the initial deposit the entire cost of replacing the bike – 400 euros.

Even with all the costs, the system is worth it, in my opinion, for the quality of life they add – and much of that can’t be quantified. Here are a couple more videos about the system.

e² transport – Paris: Vélo Liberté from kontentreal on Vimeo.

Ecovelo also had a bit to say on this issue.

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