Did JCDecaux spin the media on Paris bike-sharing news?

February 17, 7:00 AMBicycle Transportation ExaminerAdam Voiland

Previous Next

3 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Bicycle Transportation Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Velib is popular  bike-sharing service in Paris. (Photo: Flickr).

Bike-sharing has taken a hammering in the national press during the last week.

The flap began on February 9th when the Parisien published a startling article claiming that rampant theft and vandalism has driven Paris’ popular bike-sharing program Velib to the verge of financial collapse. BBC ran with the story in English on the 10th.

The New York Times was the next to weigh in. The paper's Green Inc. blog rehashed the BBC article and posted a YouTube video (see below) of French teens trashing bikes as an example of the “Velib extreme” trend that’s supposedly sweeping through Paris.

Meanwhile, American bloggers at Treehugger, BikePortland, and others have begun fretting that Velib’s supposed woes could take the sails out of efforts to bring bike-sharing to other cities around the world.

It appears, however, that there may be far more to the story than a French propensity for reckless riding and thievery. JCDecaux, the enourmous advertising company that runs Velib, may be hyping the scope of the problem to strengthen its hand in ongoing contract negotiations with the city of Paris, according to Streetsblog. JCDecaux has even let maintenance of the bikes slide to amplify the perception of vandalism as part of its media gamesmanship, according to Streetsblog’s sources in the Paris Department of Transportation.

These are rather serious accusations worthy of follow up from mainstream reporters and a response from JCDecaux. So far, JCDecaux has ignored Streetsblog’s request for an interview. The advertising juggernaut has likewise rebuffed my requests for more information. Nathalie Delebarre, a JCDecaux spokesperson, said the company doesn’t comment on the issue. “All the figures are in the Parisien Article on Monday 9 February,” she said via email.

ClearChannel Outdoor, the advertising company that runs DC’s bike-sharing program SmartBike, has been considerably more accessible. Within a day, Clear Channel Adshel President Martina Schmidt replied to my request for information about the level of theft and vandalism that DC’s program has faced since launching last summer. She notes: 

“Since the launch of SmartBike DC, we have had one stolen bike and miscellaneous instances of vandalism. It seems that most of the vandalism occurs when the user leaves the bike unattended away from the SmartBike station (in most cases the bikes were secured individually, but third parties seemed to have tampered with them).” 

Just one theft. While SmartBike DC has only 110 bikes in comparison to Velib’s 20,000 that’s still a drastically lower rate of theft than what JCDecaux is claiming. 

None of this is to say that the Streetsblog version is necessarily correct. Streetsblog brands itself as a source of advocacy journalism, and it’s possible its sources were off-base and Velib indeed faces as much of a problem as the Parisien and BBC articles claim.

Still, there’s a good chance that PR shenanigans from JCDecaux are playing a significant role in the way the story has played in the press. The fact that Streetsblog reporters have clearly contacted at least five different sources, while the BBC and Parisien appear to rely solely on JCDecaux sources suggest, in fact, that the Streetsblog article may well be more credible.

More thorough investigation from mainstream reporters would go a long ways to clearing the air. There's little doubt that an increase in the perceived expense of Velib will deliver damaging blows to ongoing efforts in San Francisco, Philadelphia, Denver, and other American cities to create bike-sharing programs modeled after the heavily-used Paris system. Thus, the stakes are significant.