With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, Vélib program's organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche. "The symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source for criminality," Le Monde mourned in an editorial over the summer.
The heavy, sandy-bronze Vélib' bicycles are seen as an accoutrement of the "bobos," or "bourgeois-bohèmes," the trendy urban middle class, and they stir resentment and covetousness. They are often being vandalized in a socially divided Paris by resentful, angry or anarchic youth, the police and sociologists say. Bruno Marzloff, a sociologist who specializes in transportation, said, "One must relate this to other incivilities, and especially the burning of cars". He said he believed there was social revolt behind Vélib' vandalism, especially for suburban residents : "There is an element of negligence that means, 'We don't have the right to mobility like other people, to get to Paris it's a huge pain, we don't have cars, and when we do, it's too expensive and too far.' ".
Lire l'intégralité de l'article : French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality
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Présentation de Chronos
Chronos est un cabinet d'études et de prospective dont les travaux s'articulent autour de quatre grands thèmes : les mobilités, la ville, le numérique et le quotidien.
