Malfunctions in new bike sharing system become Paris' nightmare
By Gong Ming
People's Daily
1515727326000

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Photo by AFP. The picture shows  users riding on the new green Vélib’ on January 1 in Paris.

Paris (People's daily) - Stations desperately empty, bikes impossible to unlock and rising fares: the arrival of the new Vélib' in Paris encountered severe malfunctions and became a “nightmare” for cyclists at the beginning of the new year, reported by AFP on January 10. Its operator Smovengo could potentially suffer heavy penalties.

Announced with fanfare on October 25, 2017, the new Vélib' promised to deploy 600 stations in the capital and 67 other municipalities of Ile-de-France on January 1, 2018. This includes 50 percent of the stations abandoned by its former operator JCDecaux. New green bicycles and blue electric ones were much anticipated by users since JCDecaux was destroying many of its stations last year.

The target was then reduced to 300 stations, but the mobile application “Vélib' Métropole” announced only 68 until January 9. To explain the delay, Smovengo said the electrical connection was more complicated than expected. Since then, the discontent continued to rise among users of this bike sharing system created in 2007 in Paris, which was once considered as the pride of the French capital and conquered 300,000 subscribers within ten years.

“The new Vélib’ is a nightmare for its users and total chaos, an industrial accident,” the cyclist's associations “Paris en Selle” denunciated and claimed three months for free. A petition launched on Change.org and signed by about 1,200 people calls for "adequate compensation" and "real and realistic communication." Netizens shared their despair and anger on social networks, complaining about the bugs in the app and difficulties on parking.

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Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, expressed her resentment on Twitter. The post says, “As Mayor of Paris and user, I’m not satisfied with the updated new Vélib’. The installation of new stations is delayed. The company should speed up or face financial penalties.”

Faced with the complaints, Vélib’ promised to deploy 1,400 stations in Paris and another 60 counties by March 31, an objective since the beginning by the new operator. “We will catch up and will have installed the 1,400 stations and 20,000 bikes planned for the spring," confirmed recently by Jorge Azevedo, general manager of Smovengo.

The troubles of the Paris Vélib' echo the difficulties encountered by other self-service bikes, not to mention the competition of sharing bikes, scooters or cars “without a station.” High costs for maintenance and desperately low numbers of subscribers lead to abandoning the self-service bicycles in several medium-sized French cities in recent months. Perpignan gave up its “Bip!” at the end of December 2017. In Caen, the V'eol, which had been in existence since 2008, gave way on January 1 to the Vélib'.

Recently, more and more foreign operators of share bikes are scrambling for the market in Paris. In late 2017, Gobee.bike, oBike and the Chinese Ofo launched their bikes without stations in Paris, Lille, Lyon and other cities in France. Many see in these bikes a simplified lifestyle. Download an application, credit card memorized, a scan via the camera of the barcode, and the bike is unlocked. Once the journey is completed, the lock is closed and the rental stops regardless of whether the bike is parked. Statistics show 5,000 more bikes, in yellow, green, orange, are circulating or parked in Parisian streets and become, to some, real rivals to traditional bikes services.