Regarding: The New York Times, October 31, 2009, “French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality”
Dear Editor,
As an American who has recently returned from living in France, I definitely agree that France’s Vélib program has been fraught with problems. However, this in not the case in Lyon, where my wife and I lived earlier this year. In fact, France’s second city — which was the first French city to start a bike-sharing program (“Vélo’v“), two years before Paris — has had no such problems. But it seems to me that either a combination of lack of enforcement, Parisians’ character, and/or significantly larger size of their program must have something to do with their propensity to damage the bikes. Without trying to sound haughty, in Lyon, I never observed vandalism with the Vélo’v system — and I used it frequently! — anywhere close to the scale of the described problems with Vélib. With public bike sharing starting to come to North America (Montreal, Washington, D.C., San Francisco) I hope that North American cities like are not scared off by this story of vandalism and instead look to other European cities where such a program does work well.
Sincerely,
Cyrus Farivar
Oakland, Calif.
