La Vita è Bella Life is Beautiful. La Vita es Bonita. 美麗人生　

242愛的鼓勵 7訂閱站台

巴黎的城市公共腳踏車計畫吸引了各方的注目。前幾周看了Dicovery節目在談未來城市的交通時也介紹了這個在巴黎的單車系統。然而為什麼巴黎這樣的大城市，會如此大膽地採用這個計畫呢？這不只是個城市景觀的建設，像是艾菲爾鐵塔或是羅浮宮的玻璃金字塔，這是一個影響全市交通的計畫；難道法國人真是如此富有想像力與創新精神？

經過一番查詢才發現：原來巴黎的自行車計畫是脫胎於在里昂實施了兩年多，成效良好的Vélo’v系統。

那是怎麼用呢？首先要買一張 vélo'v卡，其售價如下。然後只要到任一個出租點，刷一下卡，就可以開始使用。為了提高使用率與周轉率，無論哪一個方案，前半小時都是免費的，且同一日內也不限次數。然後是累進費率，用越久就越貴。

2005年的五月19日這個系統開始營運，根據2005.8.12的英國衛報(The Guardian)報導是說有1,500部自行車，和一百多個電腦化的出租站，約有15,000登記的使用會員。而當時預計到2007年年底會有4,000部自行車與400 出租站(英文本的Wikipedia現在有3,000部自行車，350 出租站。2009.7 vélo'v官方網站上有340個站的位置列表)；大約是每三百公尺就有一個出租站。啟用後不到三個月的時間，平均每天每部單車6.5次的借用，使用率還真高呢！ 這項的集體自行車計畫始於1960年代的阿姆斯特丹與哥本哈根的「白色自行車」，是樂觀嬉皮的理想：所有的人都會有足夠的公德心，在使用過後會歸還。但事實上並非如此！ 「這個集體自行車計畫在里昂會成功也反映了文化的改變，可以稱作是一種集體個人主義；每個人都有他自己的目的地，路線和時間表，但是都是用自行車。」 在實際的運作上，租借一部自行車幾乎是免費的。vélo'v有90％以上的使用都是少於30分鐘的。在里昂是由JC Decaux 來負責vélo'v系統的運作，部份用以交換在市區內的公車公車站電車電車站上廣告的權利。 When can vélo'v © be used ? 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (except in cases of force majeure) for a maximum period of 24 hours per rental.

• Who can use vélo'v © ?

• Users must :
  be at least 14 years of age ;
  have a vélo'v © card ;
  be physically able to ride a bicycle ;
  have public liability insurance.

想了解系統是怎麼運作的，請參考Vélo'v官方網站。

以下兩篇摘自英國衛報的報導及從Vélo'v的網站上所下載的許多圖片。

Rentabike moves up a gear from curiosity to runaway success, by Jon Henley 2005.8.12 是Vélo'v開始運作後不到三個月所寫的，有許多系統營運與設計的介紹。

Lyon's share, by Benji Lanyado 2007.5.19 是在Vélo'v營運兩周年所發表的一篇遊記，也是寫在巴黎推出自行車計畫Vélib'(2007.7.15)前的體驗之旅。作者從開始時的懷疑，到體驗里昂Vélo'v後，對這樣的公共自行車計畫顯然感到喜悅與期待。


Rentabike moves up a gear from curiosity to runaway success

Jon Henley in Paris
The Guardian, Friday 12 August 2005 01.21 BST

The French are not short of groundbreaking cheap and efficient public transport. But now the Paris Metro and the high-speed TGV have amore humble, although no less hi-tech, equal - the Lyon rentabike.

Less than three months after its launch, the city's Vélo'v scheme, reportedly the largest of its kind in the world, is a runaway success."Very quickly, we've moved from being a curiosity to a genuine new urban transport mode," said Gilles Vesco of the city council.

Some15,000 Lyonnais are now registered users, and the 24-hour scheme's 1,500 sturdy silver-and-red bikes - which have three gears, a handle bar basket and a lock - are detached from their 100-odd computerised racks on average 6.5 times each a day. And this is just the beginning: by 2007, there should be 4,000 cycles and up to 400 racks in the city -which is one roughly every 300 metres.

Collective bike schemes started inthe 1960s with the free "white bikes" of Amsterdam and Copenhagen, schemes which laboured under the hippy-era illusion that most user swould be public-spirited enough toreturn bikes after use. They were not.

The Lyon scheme adopts a system pioneered, on a much smaller scale, in Vienna and incorporates strong incentives not to abscond. Users must register in advance so that their personal details are on record, and they are then issued with a security code and a prepaid card, which they can top up at each rack's computer terminal.

"Our success reflects a cultural shift that you could callcollective individualism," Mr Vesco told the daily Libération. "Everyone chooses their own destination, route and timetable, but they use acollective means of transport."

But Mr Vesco is most proud of the fact that, among the scheme's many foreign admirers, the most enthusiastic has been Amsterdam, bicycling capital of the world.

Vélo'vis, apparently, a simple system to use, and is also cheap. With the prepaid card, which costs one euro for a week and five euros for a year, rental costs one euro an hour, with the first half-hour free.

In practice, that means borrowing a bike is as good as free, since 90% of all Vélo'v journeys last less than 30 minutes. It is funded by JC Decaux, the billboard multinational, which agreed to launch and operatethe bike scheme in part-exchange for the right to sell advertising space on the city's bus and tram shelters.

The company refuses to say how much it has invested in the Vélo'v scheme, which employs some 30 staff.

Each time a bike is returned to a rack the brakes, tyre pressure, gears and lights are digitally checked and the results sent to the control centre; any malfunction means the bike is not offered for rent.

There have been a few teething problems. Some racks are used far more than others, leading to shortages in the most popular spots, despite acomputerised warning system that alerts the control centre. But users can consult every Vélo'v terminal to find out which nearby rack has bikes, and soon bigger racks will be built where needed.

Lyon's share

With 20,000 communal bikes about to be dropped in Paris, we test drive the original scheme it was based on in Lyon

Benji Lanyado
The Guardian, Saturday 19 May 2007

Asone revolution sweeps through the streets of Paris, another follows hoton its heels. Cometh this summer, cometh the bike. Lauded as a new generation of "individual public transport", 14,000 communal bikes will be plonked into the heart of the French capital in mid-July, rising to over 20,000 by the end of the year. Which is all very green and lovely.  But will it be any fun?  The entire system has been copied from a scheme that has been running in Lyon for two years, where I headed for a test drive.

I was initially sceptical about the idea of exploring a city on two wheels — the last time I used a free citybike system, in Copenhagen, the trade-off involved peddling around on something like a mobile advertising board with a solitary, thigh-shredding gear.

Walking from Lyon-Perrache station across the river Saône into the cobble dstreets of Vieux Lyon, I lost count of how many people I saw using the bikes. The system here is called Vélo'v. The supersized Paris version will be called Vélib'. First impressions were good — the only indication that these were communal bikes was a heavy-looking handle bar and a bright red mud guard at the rear. And they had three gears. Not sexy, but not bad either.

I headed towards the Place St Jean,where a cathedral by the same name looms over a small square. By its side I saw a Vélo'v station (a glorified cycle rack). Using the system is initially tricky, but gets easier — like riding a bike I suppose.You put a credit card into the machine, it checks you have €150 in there (the fine if you decide to pinch the bike), then asks you for a separate pin for your Vélo'v card which it proceeds to print out for you. With your Vélo'v card, you can pick up and deposit as many bikes as you want, free for the first half an hour, €1 for the next hour, €2 for the hour after that, and so on. I didn't really have a plan, but this suited the situation nicely.  As there are so many places to pick up and drop off your bike (over 175 in the city centre), I figured I might as well cycle aimlessly until something caught my eye, at which point I would park up and explore. I crossed a bridge into Lyon's dense slither of a centre-ville, sandwiched between the Saône to its west andthe Rhône to its east. After about 10 meandering minutes, I spotted Logo (1 Place Croix-Paquet), a cafe with street-side straw chairs and pots of purple flowers adorning the railings by the road. I checked where I was on the map (virtually all maps you can pick up will have the racks indicated), dropped off the bike around the corner and wandered back for a lunch of beef carpaccio and a glass of côtes durhône.

After an hour and a half sitting outside the cafe nursing a café au lait and reading my book, I picked up another bike at the rack and headed off to nowhere in particular. My pace was leisurely —no one else was cycling fast either. I was beginning to understand the benefits of the Vélo'v system; you can get around just as you would by foot, but you inevitably end up finding more, simply because you are moving faster. Perhaps this is what Sarko's France will be like, I thought, as I rolled down on to the banks of the Rhône; one can still pootle, just a little more efficiently.

I also realised that spending any time indoors, whether dipping under the city on the metro or gliding through it on stuff y trams, is utter sacrilege on a hot Lyonnaise day. The banks of the Rhône were peppered with bikes and bodies laid out in the sun. On the northern side of the Guillotière bridge I found a mini lagoon where locals dipped their feet in pools dug into the bank, above which a wide parade of steps staggered up to the street and — bingo! — a Vélo'v rack. They knew what they were doing when they plotted this thing out. I deposited, descended, reclined, and promptly fell fast asleep. Waking with a shot of thick, sweet coffee dished out by a Lebanese man with a flask for 50c a time I splashed some water on my face and picked up another bike, again with no destination in mind. This felt great. I headed north until the banks ofthe Rhône overlap with the fringes of the vast Parc de la Tête d'Or. I noticed people paddling in the river where a tiny pebble beach stuck out from the trees. Spot on. I pulled out the map, cycled to the nearest rack, and wandered back. I've never felt so revolutionary swimming in my pants.

Could I have done all this by foot?  Probably, but it would have taken a lot longer, and I would have been twice as tired by the end of it. I also would have been ignoring a now ubiquitous local custom. The best thing about the Vélo'v is that you don't have to be clad head to foot in Lycra to do it — everyone was at it, from grannies to men in suits. I felt like a local while freewheeling down slopes in the sun, wincing on cobbled streets (tough on the bum), and stopping at leisure to do whatever I fancied. Will it work in Paris? God knows, but they've got a mighty fine example to follow.

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The 2 stories cited above were taken from the website of Guardian, and the photos from vélo'v official website; the copyright remains with their original owners. The Guardian and the authors of these 2 stories as well as vélo'v are not involved with, nor endorse the production of this blog.

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