Huddersfield Daily Examiner (Huddersfield, England), Nov 27, 2009
PARIS does not, at first glance, strike you as a place of green credentials that is trail blazing a scheme to contain noxious fumes.
But the city is two years into an experiment that is designed to provide low cost travel and cut greenhouse gas emission. It is known as Velib and offers 21,000 bicycles for hire from as little as one euro an hour.
The bikes can be taken from automated racks at 750 sites around the city.
You put your credit card into the slot, remove a bike, cycle to you destination and put the bike back in another rack.
What a wonderful idea.
Shame it could never catch on in West Yorkshire.
Well, it might be all right within the Huddersfield ring road but any further afield and the council would need to put ski lifts in Newsome Road, Scar Lane, Wakefield Road and all the other steep bits that make our locale so delightful if you don’t have to pedal.
Let’s be honest. Cycling is only for the hardy or the Olympian in this wonderfully hilly part of the God’s own county in which we live.
The one drawback with the scheme in Paris is that 8,000 bikes have been stolen in two years. They have turned up as far away as Eastern Europe, Africa and Australia.
But, surprise, surprise, none in Huddersfield.
CAPTION(S):
FORGET THE METRO: hire a bike in Paris