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Paris bike vandalism a warning for SF plan
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A fleet of Velibs in better days.
A couple of summers ago, I spent exactly one day in Paris with my family. We were in London prior to a trip to Edinburgh to attend the Fringe Festival. At the time the exchange rate sucked, so we had no budget for more than a day's visit. So, we boarded the first train out of London and caught the last one back. In between, we embarked on what has become known in our family as the Paris Death March.
Before visiting Paris, I had heard about the then-new system of Velib bikes and bike stations that were being scattered throughout the city. The idea was to give residents and tourists alike an alternative means of transportation besides buses, cabs and the Metro. You could hop a Velib at one station, ride across town, return the bike to a second station and then get on with your day. It all seemed so civilized, so green, so, well, French.
Turns out that in 18 short months, 7,800 of the first batch of 20,000 Velibs have been stolen, while another 11,600 have been damaged. In addition to being tossed into the Seine, the bikes get trashed in the course of a sport known as Velib Extreme, which looks a little like another French invention, parkour, except on two wheels. I'd paraphrase "Otter" of Animal House by saying that it's a shame that a few bad apples had to ruin this vision of cheap, pollution-free transportation for the rest of us, but with only 600 of the original fleet unscathed, it appears the bad apples are firmly in control.
Against this backdrop, you'd think other cities would pause before adopting a similar program of their own, especially in these tough economic times. But no! Serial optimist Gavin Newsom recently announced that San Francisco will soon have its own pilot fleet of 50 bikes at a cost of almost a million bucks for just one year, which works out to about $20,000 per bike. At the risk of sounding negative when it comes to the advocacy of cycling as a viable form of public transportation, WTF?
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