Vélib

As many of you may have heard (chances are, from me), Paris has a very popular bicycle sharing program called Vélib (short for Vélo (bike) + Liberté (Freedom). The program stations several tens-of-thousands of bikes across the city at electronic locking/parking stations where they can be rented at half-hour intervals. You can choose a one-day, one-week, or one year membership to the program at rates that, when compared to other forms of public transport, are ridiculously low. I've been a subscribing member for about five months now, and even though it's cold, I still get my money's worth even though the bikes have all the sleekness of an RV and the maneuverability of an even bigger RV. Let's just say they were built to survive a crash with a bus, not to win the Tour de France.

I had always asked myself, in fact, why it was that nobody ever screwed with the bikes by slashing tires, bashing in spokes, setting the stations on fire, or just plain stealing the bikes. Try to imagine a program like this in Baltimore...impossible right. This is why I was so disappointed to hear that "stuff happens" in Paris too, and a little over half of the original fleet has been lost, stolen or destroyed. To the people responsible for these atrocities, I beg of you, please don't ruin it for all the rest of us...