Using the Velib bike rental program in Paris, a review

In April 2009, I spent 10 days in Paris with family, and my wife and I tried out the Velib program (official site in English, in French) and loved it. Overall, it’s an excellent, speedy, fun, inexpensive, and very fun way to tour Paris and for point-to-point travel, 24 hours a day. If you’re not completely new to riding a bike and have some experience riding in a city, Velib will take you between most any 2 places in Paris faster and more pleasantly than the metro or even taxis (assuming conservatively travel of distances of 10K/6 miles or less). For me, it took easily about ½ as long as the Metro for most trips, ½-3/4s the time of a cab ride depending on the time of day. Many roads have bike/bus lanes that are wide and traffic is often slow and easy to navigate. Some of the faster arterials and throughways are worth avoiding when they have no bike lanes. Compared with cities in the US, auto drivers Paris are maybe a bit less cyclist-friendly in their driving habits (about the same as in San Francisco or Washington DC, — not as friendly as Seattle).

There are a number of tips, caveats and issues with the program that are worth knowing beforehand.

1. There’s a 150 euro debit or authorization on your credit card that is a precondition for using the system. If you lose a bike or it’s stolen, you lose your 150 euros. Not likely to happen, but that’s not a trivial amount.
2. The 1-7 day ticket plan is great for visitors. Even for just a few hours in Paris, it’s worth it.
3. During the payment process, sometimes the paper subscription card gets stuck in the machine. On several occasions, it took an oddly long time to come out of the machine. One time, I needed to bang on the machine to have my card drop down. While this issue is definitely a time-wasting hassle, this isn’t a risk for losing money, because your card is protected by a 4 digit code that’s not on the card.
4. Pick a bike with a seat about the right height, or adjust seat before taking it out. A seat turned backwards means there’s something wrong with the bike. Often seats can be stuck and hard to adjust easily.
5. When you return the bike at any of the many, easily found bike stations, just park the bike into a stand, wait 5 seconds for the light to turn green, and you’re done.
6. The cost is free for 1^st 30 minutes of a ride, 1 euro for each 30 minutes afterwards. To spend as little money as possible, plan for 30 minute-1 hour rides. Imo, it’s cheap enough to just ride as you need.
7. Occasionally, often at key sites, a bike station will be full, meaning you can’t return your bike at the optimal location. Most stations have maps of nearest other stations, within a few blocks, so sometimes it can take a few extra minutes to do this.
8. We didn’t have more than a few drops of rain, so rain might be an issue. The metro or a cab is a perfect alternative in the rain, though the velib tires seemed like they’d do fine in light rain.
9. For groups of 4 or more, it may be difficult to always pick up and park bikes at the same locations.
10. Remember to be safe, and that on a bike, you’re on the road with cars and need to stay aware of traffic and obey traffic laws.

The Velib system is always open, 24 hours/day, so it’s perfect for late night rides, especially after the metro closes. The traffic is less then, and the bikes all have lights, and Paris is well lit by streetlights. For me, my favorite rides were those we took from 1am-3am, with Paris lit up, cafes and bars closing, in the cool spring night air.