A frightening cemetery of bike. Villeneuve-la-Garenne, north of Paris, a large shed collects hundreds of wrecks of Vélib’ awaiting repair. To Alfortville, there was even a second, for the Vélib’ bike rentals in the south of the capital this time. Obviously, these two centres are not too many: 600 to 1,000 bikes are stolen or “privatized” each week, ensures Smovengo, company in charge of running the new network, Vélib’. “This phenomenon of degradation as volunteers we were a bit taken aback,” recognizes the Parisien/Aujourd’hui en France Pierre Heyraud, director of operations for Smovengo. After having been robbed and sometimes kept for a few days, most of these bikes are abandoned, but do not stick out as free far away…Some end their lives in the Seine, others have their wheels bent, brake torn out, repainted, or even burned, especially.
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“In other cities where we have bicycles, Clermont, Montpellier, Helsinki, Moscow, they do not come back. Nobody knows as much damage,” notes Pierre Heyraud. According to him, 60% of degradations are to be put on the account of vandalism. Naturally, this phenomenon increases as the network grows. Between June 2018 and June 2019, the number of bikes on the field is increased from 2000 to 11.500 and the number of daily runs of 3800 to 85,000. Also, this Tuesday, the ten million mark in races in the year is expected to be taken, we breath there. Finally, on the entire network, there are three times more stations than a year ago, covering a perimeter of nearly four times greater.
2500 Vélib’ have gone during the Saturday event
meanwhile, in Paris, “the number of bike is not an appointment,” said Christophe Najdovski, deputy Anne Hidalgo in charge of Transport. He asked Smovengo to “work on maintenance”, a thing that are currently 363 people, of which 87 are called in reinforcement. A year ago, they were 165. “We’ll build up strength”, promises at Smovengo. Goal: to have a 19,000 bikes are available at the end of the month of July, compared to 13.000 today. It is mainly the electric bikes (VAE), which are covered by the next injections. To achieve this goal, it would be necessary to repair 850 per day, 650 in the two repair centres in the north and in the south of Paris and 200 directly on the ground. This does, of course, that the Vélib’ bike found by the maraudes of Smovengo. Since launching the service 18 months ago, 8800 bikes were never found, “of which 2500 are related to the events,” says the company.
