Why not here? If not Soon, When? rkin

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,488359,00.html

PARIS À BICYCLETTE
Rediscovering the Romance of the Bicycle

By Stefan Simons in Paris
The French may love their bicycles, but in Paris, only
a courageous minority braves traffic on two wheels.
Mayor Bertrand Delanoe wants Parisians to consider
looking backward.

Yves Montand has a song called "À Bicyclette," a love
song to a woman whose name ("Paulette") rhymes
conveniently with the title means of transporation. It
is what outsiders think of as "typically French," both
the song and the sentiment. Except that the good old
wire donkey is considered as antique in 21st-century
France as Montand himself. There are exceptions --
like bicycles upgraded with high-tech equipment and
refashioned as instruments of speeding athleticism.
Sports riders in fluorescent sprinting outfits can be
admired as they whirl around the horse-racing tracks
of the Bois de Boulogne, for example. They usually
travel in throngs, which is hardly in keeping with the
French character.


PHOTO GALLERY: THE VÉLIB PRINCIPLE
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (3
Photos)

But all that may change if Parisian Mayor Bertrand
Delanoe and Denis Baupin of the Green Party -- the man
charged with transportation issues in Paris -- have
their way. They want to convert their fellow citizens
to the healthy and ecologically sound transportation
option of bike travel. On July 15 -- just after
Bastille Day -- Paris will introduce a citywide system
of public bike rentals called Vélib, intended to give
pedal power to the people.
The high-tech idea is to let Parisians as well as
tourists rent bikes from public stations with nothing
but a chip card. No fewer than 750 self-service
stations equipped with over 10,000 rentable bikes will
go into service in July. The city's Socialist-Green
administration has been promoting the idea that
bicycles produce no emissions, remain mobile in
traffic jams, and -- most importantly -- are easy to
park. They want people in Paris to choose the bicycle
over the car, the bus or the subway. Cycling isn't
even slower than driving, since car drivers in Paris
move through the avenues and boulevards at an average
speed of just five kilometers an hour (3.1 mph).

Liberated vélos

The Vélib model of public bike rentals -- variations
of which already exist in other cities such as Rennes,
Strasbourg and Lyon (not to mention Berlin) -- is
simple. Each station is equipped with 15 bicycles.
Customers release one bike from the station by means
of a chip card, which then lets them deposit the bike
at any other station at the end of the journey.
Payment occurs electronically. A customer has to load
up the card by buying a subscription to the service,
which can be purchased online, in town halls or at
post offices. Using a metro ticket as a subscription
will also be possible at some stations.

The bicycles -- "chic and cosmopolitan," according to
Céline Lepault from the city administration; painted
in "elegant gray" according to French daily Le Monde
-- are genuinely sterling objects. They weigh 22
kilograms (49 pounds) and have a basket attached to
the handlebars. They're also equipped with a light, a
lock and an easily handled three-speed gear shift.
They're not the sort of dapper racing bikes or
fashionable mountain bikes that might tempt thieves,
but sound means of transportation suited to the urban
jungle and appropriate for short distances. The key to
the Vélib model is that the bikes can change hands
quickly and often: The price structure encourages
users to ride them for short one-way stretches and
deposit them again in the electronic stations --
rather than renting a bike for a whole day or week.

The advertising firm JCDecaux, which provides the
bikes, has promised to double the number by the end of
the year. Almost 2,100 bikes should be in circulation
throughout Paris by the end of 2007, tended by 300
JCDecaux employees.

Like truckers in Citroëns

The Vélib debut comes after a number of private and
government initiatives encouraging people to ride.
Three hundred cities in France celebrated the
"Festival of the Bicycle" in June, and only a week
later bicylists took to the streets naked in an
internationally-organized protest ride to promote
clean transportation and underscore the vulnerability
of cyclists in cities.


PHOTO GALLERY: BIKING NAKED FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (9
Photos)

This vulnerability is something Baupin and Delanoe
also want to address, because riding a bike through
Paris still requires a measure of courage. Trapped
between a solid wall of motor traffic and breakneck
motorcyclists -- or kamikaze scooter drivers --
bicyclists in this city of two million need strong
nerves as well as strong calves, all the more so
because the average French cyclist tends to navigate
the streets in a Jacobin spirit of revolt. Red lights
aren't considered a stop signal; 71 percent told the
newspaper Le Parisien that they just zip through the
intersection. One-way streets are mainly symbolic. The
French cyclist is assertive and reckless, like the
Parisian motorist, who tends to behave like a truck
driver even when he sits behind the wheel of a
Citroën.
But the city has invested heavily in its bicycle
infrastructure over the past three years. This measure
is part of a larger strategy to spoil the fun for car
drivers, a strategy that has earned Mayor Baupin the
reputation of being a "dangerous madman," or even a
"Khmer Vert."

The "man who declared war on cars" (as the magazine Le
Nouvel Observateur calls him) can understand the anger
of the drivers: "It's about more than a means of
transportation, after all," says Mayor Baupin. "It's
about their place in society." Still, the technocrat
and advocate of metropolitan transit ("I drive in a
car with a hundred seats: It's called the metro") is
convinced that it is only by such means that problems
like air pollution and congestion can be avoided.

Since 2001, Paris's network of bike paths has been
expanded to a total length of 320 kilometers (199
miles). Many of the paths are separate traffic
corridors, or else marked tracks along the streets,
and outside Paris along the canals. That's certainly
an improvement. But statisticians also count those 118
kilometers (73 miles) of chaussée routes that cyclists
"share" with buses as bike paths. And even where the
paths are exemplary, such as along the banks of the
Seine, cyclists cannot ride undisturbed -- since
motorcyclists race their machines along them during
rush hour, leading to encounters that sometimes curdle
the blood.
So Paris may remain dangerous territory for
pedal-pushing commuters, but the bicycle is still a
pleasant alternative for tourists. Associations like
"Mieux se déplacer à bicyclette" (MDB, or "Better to
Travel By Bike") or "Paris Rando Vélo" organize
excursions and nightly rides. Meanwhile companies like
"Paris à Vélo, C'est Sympa," "Paris Vélo Rent-a-bike"
and "Paris Bike Tour" offer extravagant tours -- also
in foreign languages. Bike rental agencies offer their
own services, and those who fear the inclines on the
city's hills -- as on the Butte Montmartre or the
approach to the Champs Elysées -- can resort to the
bikes rented by "Paris Charms Secrets," which are
equipped with electric auxiliary engines.

Baupin and Delanoe hope a little government action can
turn Paris back to a slightly simpler era. Perhaps the
city of love will still allow for unexpected
encounters of the romantic kind, of the kind Yves
Montand sang about: à Bicyclette. Paulette, in any
case, would be thrilled.



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