11–20 of 77 posts
They see them as cluttering the streets and operating without the proper licencing and permissions.
To rectify the issue, they will happily throw 50 bikes into the river each time they pass a parking area.
They see it as doing the government/the people a favour. The guy I spoke to who did this didn't have a smartphone, so I would guess hadn't even used the scheme.
I work for a public transportation company (buses) that offers bikes for rent. We experience the same vandalism problems in our little French town of 50k inhabitants. The bikes are thrown in rivers, stolen and found in Africa, burned, thrown from the 14th floor etc etc We hired 4 people whose sole job is to fetch and repair those bikes. Tax payer money well spent?
> stolen and found in Africa That was unexpected. How do they end up in Africa? Sounds like there is an interesting story there. I can see teenagers stealing them, throwing them from a roof, vandalizing them, but how in the world do they have the dedication to ship them to a different continent. I guess it could be "a challenge" to impress their peers.
What did they expect ? Criminality is high in France, and higher in Paris.
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/France/Unit...
I'm surprised... Cologne, Germany has dockless bike rental for more than a decade, but none of the operators complain about excessive vandalism. Culturally it shouldn't be to different from France. The DB bikes were pretty sturdy though - I typically referred to 'renting a tank'. There were some rumours the Chinese bike rentals were only after their customer's data, since none of their models could've been profitable…
A lot of people forget to refund their own deposit, and the rental company gets to keep a lot of money.
I'm surprised... Cologne, Germany has dockless bike rental for more than a decade, but none of the operators complain about excessive vandalism. Culturally it shouldn't be to different from France. The DB bikes were pretty sturdy though - I typically referred to 'renting a tank'. There were some rumours the Chinese bike rentals were only after their customer's data, since none of their models could've been profitable…
I'm surprised... Cologne, Germany has dockless bike rental for more than a decade, but none of the operators complain about excessive vandalism. Culturally it shouldn't be to different from France. The DB bikes were pretty sturdy though - I typically referred to 'renting a tank'. There were some rumours the Chinese bike rentals were only after their customer's data, since none of their models could've been profitable…
I'm French and living in Germany, I laughed while reading this. The countries are close to each others but the culture is different, especially concerning vandalism/individualism. I have many examples like the cleanliness of public spaces to the state of public bikes (comparing Velib' v. StadtRAD, the German version works way better), the general feeling being that French people undervalue the impact of one's acts on a global community, leading to the situation described in the article.
Ask a German why do they pay more for health instances than in France and they will answer "Our debt is going down, our kids will not pay more than us and the system should work in the long term.", I had never heard that thought before moving outside of France.
For some reason nobody talks about the extreme nuisance of those bikes. Customers would just drop them literally anywhere : on the sidewalk blocking pedestrians, right in the middle of the street blocking cars, in front of building doors preventing people from entering, etc... Such a terrible nuisance, and something to be expected since there is such little room in the Parisian streets (you can’t seriously expect cus…
I'm from a city with lots of space so their rental bikes are never in the way. They're always in a proper place.
Also they have a system that you must return the bike to one of the rental stations within the allotted time. If you don't do that you will get a fine since you must use your personal info to rent them.
Docked systems seem to work really well (e.g. London), presumably because you can’t take a bike without leaving your credit card details.
For some reason nobody talks about the extreme nuisance of those bikes. Customers would just drop them literally anywhere : on the sidewalk blocking pedestrians, right in the middle of the street blocking cars, in front of building doors preventing people from entering, etc... Such a terrible nuisance, and something to be expected since there is such little room in the Parisian streets (you can’t seriously expect cus…
Well, actually, the nuissance of the people not knowing how/where to put the bike away properly and/or being too lazy to do so or just being too selfish and not caring about others at all. Just like there's always this couple of car drivers parking where they shouldn't etc. But with these bikes it's just way easier to do. Just like it's also way easier for you or any one else to pick up the bike and put it away 2m further if that's less annoying, which is what I'd do if it would be in my way.
In the end I think the only solution is a mentality shift and more bikes, contradictory as that may sound. When enough people realize their behaviour is super annoying they might actually do something about it. In cities with a thousand times more bikes than in Paris there aren't too much problems like this because most are in the same boat.
there is such little room in the Parisian streets
Hmm, I'm not sure what part of the city exactly you're talking about and yes there aren't too many official bike parkings but in general I'd say there's plenty of room to tuck away a couple of bikes. Perhaps not always right in front of the place one wants to be, but still..