Bicycles in Paris

I’m on a nine-day trip to France with students from my school (the benefits of sharing my classroom with a French teacher!), and we spent the last couple days in Paris. Paris is doing some good things to get more folks on bikes, including rental bikes all over town:

Rental bikes similar to but easier than City Carshare. You buy a 30 Euro ticket for the year, then you go to one of the many stations around the city and wave your card over the lock on a bike. You then have it for 30 minutes for free. After 30 minutes, it’s about one Euro for each hour, but it seems like most folks have figured out that you just ride it for 25, then swap for another bike, and it stays free.

I can’t find a link to the city’s info on it (and most of us probably can’t read French anyway), but here’s an NPR story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14429468

Also, lots of nice bike routes, both on streets, off streets, and on streets but segregated for bikes and buses only.

I uploaded photos to my gallery at http://trampleasure.net/lee/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=538
if you wants to look at them. I haven’t had the chance to add captions to most of them yet, but I hope to soon. (If you hit the “View Slideshow” link in the right menu, you can have them automatically rotate through at whatever pace and size you desire).