Paris launches eco-friendly bike service

PARIS — It was a perfect Paris moment: The rain cleared, the sky filled with blue, and I was flying across town on a bicycle, past the Louvre, along the Seine River, through a public garden and up a cobblestone market street.

As a tourist in Paris, it's easy to spend at least an hour every day in the Metro, but sometimes you need to come up for air. After taking a test run of Paris City Hall's inexpensive, easy-to-use new bike service, I pledged to spend less time this summer in Paris' underworld and more time out joyriding.

Starting July 15, more than 10,600 bikes will be posted all over town at 750 stations, and the numbers of both will nearly double by the year's end. The great news for tourists is that City Hall has made sure the service is convenient for tourists, not just Parisians, by offering short-term passes and access in eight languages.

Velib', as the service is called, is a word made up by blending together "velo" (bike) and "liberte" (liberty). The idea is flexibility: You grab a bike from any station around town — they pop up every 330 yards or so — and park it at any other station. That means you don't have to haul the bike back to your hotel if your feet hurt or it starts raining.

Velib' is Socialist Mayor Bertrand Delanoe's latest effort to make Paris more green and bike-friendly, after ripping up car lanes to install bike paths — much to the angst of some drivers, who complain there are more bottlenecks now.

Today, there are 230 miles of bike lanes in Paris, and Paris City Hall says the amount of bike traffic has increased nearly 50 percent since 2001. Paris isn't a paradise for bikers yet — there's still a lot of car traffic and confusing one-way streets — but a ride is no longer the obstacle course it once was.

By launching the bike program, Paris is following in the footsteps of European cities including Stockholm, Vienna, Barcelona, Brussels and Copenhagen. The German railway system has a bicycle rental program, where you unlock rental bikes at rail stations using your cell phone. A service in Lyon, France, has also been a hit, inspiring Paris to try it, too. In Lyon, every bike is used seven to 15 times a day, and the average number of rides a day is upward of 15,000.

The Paris plan already has more than 6,000 annual subscribers, though it hasn't started yet. A yearlong pass is $39.50, while a one-day pass costs a euro — about $1.36 — and a seven-day ticket goes for five euros — about $6.80.

Still, you'll wind up paying slightly more than that, if ever you keep the bike for more than half an hour at a time.