Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Bike Sharing in Paris

Paris’s bike-sharing system, the Vélib’, lets users rent any bike from their ubiquitous stations in increments of 30 minutes each, and you can return the bike at any of their locations for 1 euro. 8 euro for a week and 19 euro for a year. Only catch is that Vélib’ bikes require a credit-card deposit, and the on-location machines accept only cards with embedded chips. American cards all use magnetic strips, about as archaic in Europe as feet and inches.