The Dublin Bikes Service will need a lot of monitoring, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor
JC DECAUX, the French advertising company sponsoring Dublin’s bike rental scheme, has “learned a lot” from the shocking toll of vandalism and theft that has plagued the otherwise highly successful Vélib scheme in Paris, according to Dublin City Council.
Posters on JC Decaux panels in Paris draw attention to the fact that 16,000 Vélib bikes have been vandalised and 8,000 stolen since the scheme was launched in 2007.
They depict a snarling devil in a boxing ring tearing a Vélib apart – to the horror of onlookers. “Casser un vélib, c’est facile – il ne peut pas se défendre” (to break a vélib, that’s easy – it can’t defend itself), the slogan from Mairie de Paris says. Beneath the cartoon image are the stark statistics: “16,000 vélos vandalisés – 8,000 vélos disparus” (disappeared).
The message from the city administration is “Vélib est a vous, protegez-le!” (Vélib is yours, protect it!). The name derives from an abbreviation of vélo (bicycle) and liberté (freedom), and the initiative to introduce it came from Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë.
The original contract gave JC Decaux a 10-year licence to erect 1,600 advertising panels citywide in return for running the scheme, which involved supplying 20,000 bikes at 1,250 “stations” plus a share of the revenue, estimated at €20 million for the first full year. Since the scheme’s launch, nearly all the original bicycles have been replaced at a cost of €400 each. Dedicated JC Decaux staff recover at least 20 abandoned Vélib bikes per day and also carry out some 1,500 repairs on a daily basis to keep the fleet in working order.
A BBC report noted the distinctive Vélib bikes had been “hung from lamp posts, dumped in the river Seine, torched and broken into pieces, so maintaining the network is proving expensive”.
Remi Pheulpin, JC Decaux’s director general, warned this year that its contract with the city was becoming unsustainable due to theft and vandalism. “It’s simple”, he told Le Parisien newspaper. “All the receipts go to the city. All the expenses are ours.” The costs were “so high that a private business cannot handle it alone, especially as it’s a problem of public order. If we want the Vélib set-up to keep going, we’ll have to change the business model.”
Now, the Mairie de Paris contributes a share of replacement costs.
A spokesman for Dublin City Council said JC Decaux had “learned a lot from its experience elsewhere”, particularly in Paris. As a result, the Dublin bikes have no visible cables or wires, which would be soft targets for petty vandalism, so that’s not going to be a huge issue. He noted the Dublin Bikes scheme was limited to just 40 “stations”, all centrally located within the canal ring. “All of them have a good element of ‘passive surveillance’ and would be fairly visible most hours that people are on the streets.”
The locking system had also been changed, based on the Paris experience. “A magnetic system is being used here, so that if a bike is not locked properly when it is returned to a station, the user is alerted to this by a continuous beep and a red light,” he said.
The 450 bikes being supplied for use in Dublin would be “monitored all the time” by 27 people employed by JC Decaux who would deal with maintenance and distribution of the fleet.
The spokesman also noted that to get access to the system, users would have to give their credit card details to become members either for one year or just three days. If a bike is not returned within 24 hours, the card will incur a charge of €150.
This would not happen, however, if the bike had been stolen and the theft reported. “We’re not saying it’s going to be perfect, but it’s fair to say that the Dublin Bikes scheme is based on best practice in other cities. And it will have more safeguards than for the cow parade.”
The spokesman was referring to the life-sized fibreglass art project that toured a number of cities. Only in Dublin were the cows vandalised – even decapitated – and they had to be taken indoors for safety.