Later this month, the City of Paris is slated to have bike rental stations throughout the City of Lights. On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will be able to rent bicycles throughout the city. The rental machines will accept credit cards or special bike rental cards available through Cyclocity, the rental company.

Rental prices increase fairly quickly. Beyond the $195 deposit required to rent a bike, use will be free for the first 30 minutes, $1.30 for the next 30 minutes, $2.60 for the third half-hour, and $5.20 for the fourth half-hour of use and every 30 minutes after that. That makes the cost of a two-hour rental about $9.10. We take this to mean that the company wants to encourage short trips. There is also a small annual fee.

This is an alluring concept and we all hope that this plan will indeed help Paris meet its stated goals with this program: to reduce pollution and traffic congestion in the city. Here are some numbers of interest:
*20,600 bicycles for rent in the city, by year’s end
*1,450 rental stations
*250 yards - Average distance between rental stations

This is one of those alternatives-to-car-rental options we’ve been looking for. Bicycles are just so darn practical and it is good that city governments are starting to recognize this.

~vc

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 1st, 2007 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Bikes, Cities, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.