Things Parisians do well - Transport

Hi Aussies,

Sucked in to how crap your local transport is. Over here, transport is awesome. I sat at a metro station for 10 mins, on Wednesday afternoon, and watched 10 trains arrive in 10 mins, with ruthless French efficency. Certainly a lot better than Cityrail could ever manage thats for sure.

Apart from the metro, there are two things transport wise that the French do much better than anything else. Motorcycles, and Bicycles.

Here in Paris, most people ride scooters and motorbikes, so much more so than anywhere else I have ever been. As can be seen in these pics.



And the beauty is, if you have a scooter, you can ride it wherever you want, even on the footpath, and pretty much park it where ever the hell you want also.




The best thing that the local govt in Paris have brought in is a 'free' bicycle scheme called the 'Velibs' Here is the entry from wikipedia about Velibs

Vélib’ (French: vélo libre or vélo liberté, English: free bicycle or bicycle freedom) is a public bicycle rental programme in Paris, France. The initiative was pushed by Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë from the French Socialist Party. The system was launched on 15 July 2007, following Lyon's Vélo'v success. Ten thousand bicycles were introduced to the city with 750 automated rental stations each with fifteen or more bikes/spaces. This number has since grown to 20,000 bicycles and 1,450 stations, roughly one station every 300 metres throughout the city centre, making Vélib’ the largest system of its kind in the world.

Seriously the Velibs are AWESOME! you just swipe your little card in the terminal and a bike is yours, and its free for the first 1/2 and hour, and then 1 euro for each 1/2 an hour after that. As you can read from above, the velib stations are absolutely everywhere throughout metro Paris, and you just grab a bike, ride where you want and put it in the station where you arrive.

Here is a pic of a velib terminal


Oh yeah, and the other thing is that no one wears a helmet when riding in Paris either. Its seriously not cool at all. (or not safe for that matter)