Short Film on Vélib, World's Biggest Bike-Sharing Program in Paris
by Michael Graham Richard, Ottawa, Canada 
on 07.15.08
StreetFilms has produced an excellent short video on Vélib, the great bike-sharing program in Paris that inspired so many others around the world. Almost 1,500 bike stations are spread all over the city, with over 20,000 bicycles and 3 million subscribers have saved about 10 million kilometers of car trips. This is a real world demonstration that bike-sharing does work. We hope that the world is paying attention.
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please sydney, little less pope, little more velib
Pretty cool. When I lived in Paris, besides the metro, I use to walk all over to get around. This bike system is great. I now live in Houston, TX. It would be a miracle to even consider it here. Instead, I have my own bike and do ride it a lot. Not the same experience.
This is awesome, how do they deal with returning bikes to stations that are full? Would it just keep charging you? until you put it back?
If a station is full, you can get 15 minutes more free of charge to have time to find another one, by passing your velib card on the station terminal. This can be done several times.
Full stations can effectively be a problem, for example in the center of Paris saturday afternoon...
We used this during a trip to Paris last year, awesome service! Biked all over the downtown.