PARIS (Reuters) - It's summer in Paris and the French capital is preparing to offer bikes for anyone who wants to take a ride.
By July 15, the city plans to park 10,648 bicycles at 750 stations and nearly double that by 2008, with riders able to take bikes from one station and drop them off at another.
Work on "Velib"' (short for 'free bike' in French) is just starting, but it is already sparking enormous interest.
The paris Vélib' community bikes project is really interesting.
ReplyDeleteIt will be exciting to see how it develops. However the point in this blog about the motives of the firm and the cluttering of the city with advertisements is something worth considering.
I suggested elsewhere that the advertisements should not be as big and not luminous. Perhaps that is not what they do in Paris, but at least in Oslo those huge, bright boards of ClearChannel which runs oslobysykkel.no are a problem.
Instead the revenue should come from pricing parking and taxing car-driving according to the obvious harm that it does. Polluter Pays Principle.
The Oslo Bysykkels are fantastic (I've just written about them here - http://oschester.blogspot.com/ ), although I do share Morten's views about the funding of them.
ReplyDeleteThat said a few six-sheet posters is a small price to pay for free, fun and environmentally friendly transport around the city. Other urban councils/authorities etc please take note!
Cheers
Oschester