My experience with 'Velib' rental bikes in Paris

[Prashanth Chengi]

Hi, 

I was in Paris, on a short visit, and tried renting a 'Velib' bike, to explore the city. The business model of Velib is highly interesting, and seems to be the result of extensive research of typical commuter behavior, and IMO, leads to a highly optimized utilization of bicycles, by ensuring high rate of turnarounds. I wish Bangalore got something like this. My account is here:
http://prashanthchengi.livejournal.com/77523.html

/Prashanth

[Prashanth Chengi]

The previous link was missing an 'l' at the end!
Corrected url:
http://prashanthchengi.livejournal.com/77523.html

/Prashanth

[Yateesh Kumar]

Fantastic write up Prashanth :)  

Thanks for taking time out to share your experience and insights into the business model. 

--
biking conversations on the world famous "Bangalore Bikers Club" :)
 
are you a part of the bicycle racing scene?
Visit www.bangalorebicyclechampionships.com for more details
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Bangalore Bikers Club" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to bangalore-bikers+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Opendro]

That is an awesome initiative. Thanks for sharing.

[Chidambaran Subramanian]

Its there in many places in Europe. But multiple initatives of that sort were tried out. One in Bombay and of course namma cycle here. 

They haven't taken off. Not sure if the namma cycle initiative in IISc at least is working or not? Murali and Sridhar would be able to say.

[Karthick Gururaj]

Thanks - like the concept of hoarder's tax.

- Karthick

[Chidambaran Subramanian]

The Paris one at least has been on for more than 10+ years now. But how does it compare with using public transport? 

Spending 3-4+ Euros is a lot. 

[Prashanth Chengi]

I'm here for a conference. Distance from hotel to conference venue is 4.9 km which google says I ought to be able to bike in 19 minutes. Taking public transport means switching two lines on the Paris Metro, and purchasing a 1.9 EUR ticket (each way), and takes 26 minutes.  The bike ticket is 1.7 Eur per 24 hr period, and with some planning, I can make any number of trips without paying extra. That's a saving of at least 2 Eur each day. 

/Prashanth

[O p e n d r o]

What if they setup the bike station near major public hubs and transport stations? That will not compete, but rather complement each other.

[Chidambaran Subramanian]

I missed that 1.7 Eur per 24 hr period. Okay so you have to keep finishing trips within the half hour.

Now I get it

Chiddu

On Mon, Jan 16, 2017 at 11:54 AM, Prashanth Chengi <prashant...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Chidambaran Subramanian]

I think that is what has been done Opendro. A friend tried to set up something like this in Bangalore and Gurgaon, he couldn't get bank loans or kindle investor interest.

[berkeleydb]

Prashanth -- Nice write-up about Velib. Interesting policy to discourage hogging. Use for tourism seems a bit steeply priced. Just charging 1-2€ per extra half hour I thought might be OK. Going up to 4€ per extra half hour, seems a bit bad for tourists.

Btw, from what you said, looks like the bike does_not give the user any indication on the 30min period running down? That would be nice, rather than user having to track the time.

Chiddu -- The bike share scheme at IISc has been discontinued, from what I was told when I had gone to IISc ~2months back.

-{db}.

[Prashanth Chengi]

DB, yup, bike doesn't give any indication of time remaining. That would indeed have been a nice thing to have.  I noticed however that they were bike stations near most major tourist locations, like monuments, close to metro stations etc. If a tourist doesn't mind the extra overhead of doing the bike switcheroo, he/she can get by without paying any extra fee, but I think it does spoil the whole sightseeing/exploration mood, so I decided to take that bite on my wallet, and simply enjoy.   The innumerable traffic lights and the Paris traffic are the other irritants.

/Prashanth

[udayak...@gmail.com]

Very nice write-up. Thanks for sharing.

Uday