New York Mayor Impressed by French Velib

PARIS, France - The New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited Paris last week and was impressed by the success of the bike rental system Velib. He acknowledged the challenges of bringing home a popular bike rental but added it was unsure to translate the Velibs success to New York.

“This is one of those creative ideas, and whether it will work or not, we’ll have to see”, Mayor Bloomberg said. “We try to see whether it fits, and some parts of it will, but it may very well give you an idea to do something totally different.” New York has to face the challenges of roads damaged by seasonal changes, the lack of bike lanes, liability problems and the possibility that commuters would not want to carry helmets to work.

The French can look back on a successful introduction of the Velib. According to local authorities some 100,000 people had signed up for yearly membership and that customers had taken more than 5 million rides.

In the meantime unofficial statistics state that the sale of city bikes has gone down drastically. In Paris Decathlon sold over 30% less city bikes compared with 2006. The same happened in Lyon, where the bike rental system was launched earlier. In this city bike sales recovered in the year after the introduction.

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