In praise of Paris's Vélib!

It's all too easy for a blog to sink into negativity, carping at all the things that are wrong, misleading or inexplicable. So, this for entry I'll focus on something good…well, not 100% perfect, but perhaps something from which we could learn.

Cycle hire schemes are all the range in capital cities. Berlin is installing one, London has its Boris bikes and even Washington DC has a scheme (above). But the granddaddy (or should that be grandpère?) of the all is Paris's Vélib, launched in 2007 and with 1,200 docking stations and some 16,000 cycles, the second highest number in the world (after Hangzhou, apparently). That's around 3 times as many bikes and docking stations as in London, and 15 times the number of bikes in Washington. And last weekend I was lucky enough to be in Paris on a dry day, with a number of destinations to visit, so able to test it for myself.

Firstly, it's user friendly. Arriving at the Vélib station nearest to my budget hotel (which was just outside the famed Boulevard Peripherique orbital motorway) it happily gave me instructions in English and accepted my non-French credit card to give me a 24-hour code, asking me to add my own 4 digit PIN. And the daily hire charge was exactly the same as single ticket on the Metro or for a bus. Once done, it was simply a question of choosing a nearby bike and working out the correct angle to pull it to remove it from the locking device. (OK, I'll admit it, I was 90° out the first time and had to re-key in my details to get a second chance.) Thereafter it was plain sailing (no, plain cycling).

Vélib bikes are rather like Boris bikes: heavy and unlikely to be attract cycle thieves, but quite practicable for a reasonably flat city like Paris. They have a 3-speed gear change which I found a bit too ready to change: I only had to wiggle my wrist to find myself unexpectedly in the wrong gear. And, like many hire bikes, for a regular cyclist the top gear was almost the only one necessary.

Why this paean of praise to Paris? Because the Vélib seems to work better than the London bikes (or those in some other cities that seem to discourage non-native users). The key feature is the density of docking sites – they are typically no more than 300m apart, and most have large numbers of stands. This means that there is nearly always space to return a bike near to your destination (a real problem in London) and in most cases there are bikes available.

Of course Saturday may not be a typical day for the system, and returning late at night to Porte d'Orleans Metro station I found the rack empty – but no problem, as the one round the corner still had seven available cycles. And earlier on I had taken the past available bike at the Parc des Expositions. Conversely, I did also find two full racks (both near the Bastille) but only at locations where I was tempted to swap over my bike to avoid the 50c penalty charge for exceeding 30 minutes' use.

It's not perfect: one bike I took out of the rack without a proper inspection proved to have only one pedal (and so had to be swapped over hurriedly.) I am not sure if on a weekday the distribution of bikes may have been more of an issue, although Paris's layout may help, with few skyscrapers inside the Boulevard Peripherique meaning workplaces are more evenly dispersed across the city than in London, and the high density of Metro lines permitting more Vélib stations to be located at termini.

Then, of course there are French drivers. Even when they can see a Vélib bike on the bike lane (and yes, I was wearing my hy-viz jacket) the concept of indicating if they are planning to turn right in front of the cyclist still seems a bit foreign to them. French drivers are also prone to double parking with their hazard warning lights on, and seem to enjoy pulling off without indicating precisely as a cyclist overtakes them. And there seemed to be a significant minority of drivers (largely, but not exclusively taxis and vans) who regard cycle lanes as convenient short-term parking. In fact some of the cycle lanes seem to have been planned by sadists (well the Marquis de Sade was French), such as one dropping cyclists off on the wrong side of the road (well, the English side) at the entrance to the Place de la Bastille, requiring them to enter in the middle of the roundabout over what were really quite uneven cobblestones.

So I suppose I could summarise by saying that the cycle scheme is great value and well organised (each time I rented a new bike it remembered to tell me what to do in English), but that French drivers need to be more aware of the cycles in their midst. I am a reasonably experienced and confident cyclist, but it needed a degree of faith to keep pedalling on in some situations. But if there's one lesson that we could learn it must be that a successful scheme needs a lot of bikes and a dense network of docking stations to be of use. For despite my reservations, I still hope to use the Vélib next time I'm in Paris.

CO2 emissions from cycling

The Environmental Transport Association (ETA) Trust (always an interesting website) reports that the European Cyclists Federation (ECF) have compared the CO2 produced by cycling with other modes of transport.

According to the report cycling is responsible for CO2 emissions of 21g per km. The calculations included emissions associated with production, maintenance and fuel. The figures were based on a heavy 19kg European-style town bike built using 14.6kg of aluminium, 3.7kg of steel and 1.6kg of rubber and the cost of producing the extra calories consumed by a cyclist rather than a motorist. The report calculated that an average car produced 271g and a bus 101g.

It concludes that Europe could reduce its overall emissions by one quarter if its population cycled as regularly as the Danes. In Denmark the average person cycles almost 600 miles each year – far more than the EU average of almost 120 miles per person per year and a total of 46 miles in Britain. ETA comment that this is largely due to better facilities in Denmark, as the climate and generally flat urban areas are similar in both.

Figures like this are always fun, but a little misleading. Although it’s right to consider the embodied emissions in the bike itself, an even more favourable comparison would be to look purely at the marginal emissions for those who already own a bike (and that’s most of us) – mainly tyre wear for a bike (plus a teeny bit of oil, brake blocks and wear & tear on other components).

When I cycle to work (2.5 miles each way, not very flat) I usually reward myself with a bun or a few biscuits, but the calorific value consumed (and net carbon emissions) are lower than the marginal energy that I exert compared to the wet days when I drive. In other words I’m eating into my fat resources on cycling days, and adding to them on other days. So there’s not too many extra CO2 emissions from that. I have attempted to use a more direct carbon conversion from, say, the footprint on some packets of crisps but it’s very hard to know exactly how much energy I use cycling (and I do know I use less energy now that am I fitter than when I first started regularly cycling to the office 6 years ago).

Finally, there’s one thing to avoid – that tempting shower on arrival at the office. If heated by electricity, the emissions from an extra shower are likely to undo all the good work cycling. A 3 minute shower using an average 8.5kW (based on electric ones advertised in the UK) and Defra grid average emissions would use 0.425kWh, equivalent to about 223g of CO2 (see the NEF's Carbon Calculator for an easy converter). Longer showers - baths - only add to the net emissions.

Which is scarier: Obesity or Climate Change?

The question posed may seem trivial, weird even. But clearly not to the new British Government - Dawn Primarolo was shown on the news last night keeping a perfectly straight face as she announced that Obesity is a greater risk to the UK than Global Warming. Apparently she was only echoing the words of her boss, Alan Johnson, but it does raise another interesting question about perceptions of risk - just after we have heard how the public perceive the risk from terrorism vs. Climate Change.

Of course, I suspect that in truth we have a little bit of jumping on the bandwagon here. You can almost see the frustrated health minister listening to all the positive coverage on Friday about Al Gore and Climate Change, and thinking "Why can't we have some of that?". So some bright young intern no doubt comes up with comparing obesity risk to climate risk and - hey presto! - you get an excellent soundbite that makes climate freaks like myself spluttering into my cocoa¹.

So how do we compare the risks? Well, in one sense, Ms Primarolo may be right. If we look at premature deaths among UK citizens, then there may be more attributable to obesity than to climate change, and will almost certainly be so over the next 25 years. Longer term, it's harder to hazard a guess - indeed if some of the predictions about the loss of agricultural land (and lower yields) due to rising sea levels (and weather instability) are true, the obesity issue may dissipate as food prices rise. I doubt that we'll starve in Britain, but the days of cheap meat (and hence cheap burgers) and vegetable oils may be over sooner than we expect. But if we fast forward past 2050, and don't take action against climate change in the near future, I suspect that even in the UK climate related deaths (including ones from illnesses associated with shifting climate patterns) will outnumber obesity ones.

Perhaps I can square this circle with a suggestion for something that can simultaneously tackle obesity AND climate change. Cycling. Yes, using the humble push-bike to commute to your work or school will address both issues at ones, at a very low cost. And there's some evidence that healthy people feel happier, too, and so worry less about Government pronouncements on obesity, climate change, or whatever...

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¹ Of course, we environmentalists too can be guilty of jumping onto bandwagons to try and elevate our message. I fondly recall an advert I saw in 1992 in Northern Ireland that carried the message in block capitals "ENERGY INEFFICIENCY IS AS ANTI-SOCIAL AS DRINKING AND DRIVING". Maybe...or maybe not...