In London, the city has adopted the Montreal Bixi system naming it Barclay's Cycle Hire though it is more popularly known as Boris Bikes after the mayor of London.The bikes are the same as the Bixi bikes used in Montreal though the stations tend to be permanently embedded in a location since the city doesn't have to worry about snow clearing.
Initially, I had hopes of biking around the city on one of the Cycling Super Highways, but this dream quickly evaporated once I saw the traffic and that these highways were nothing more than painted squares on some of the street lanes.
In the above picture, CS7 is actually the second lane from the left so cyclists get to have traffic whizzing by on both sides. As well, the fact that a cyclist died the month before on a Boris Bike didn't help (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23210035). Even so, some people did brave the roads on a BB.
So, still wanting to say that I had biked in London, we decided to head to Hyde Park, which has some bike paths and a couple of Barclays Cycle Hire stations in the vicinity. Of course, trying to get a bike was a challenge as there was a problem with the terminal though the person on the helpline was able to process the transaction and get us going. Once on the bike, it was worth the trouble and a pleasant ride through the park.
In Paris, the bike share system is called Velib. The system is similar to the Bixi, but the bikes are somewhat lighter in weight and more pleasant to ride on.
There are stations throughout central Paris and several around the hotel we were staying at near Place de la Nation. With it being August, half of the Parisiens were out of the city on holiday. Also, our first full day in Paris was a Sunday so the city seemed very tranquil. We saw that there seemed to be alot of bike paths we could use to visit the city and decided to give the Velibs a try.
Overall, the experience of riding around Paris on a Velib was a very positive one. A one day ticket cost only 1.7 Euros, which is less than half of what it costs for a day ticket in Montreal with Bixi. There are many bike paths to choose from though you need to watch out for pedestrians at all times since the paths tend to be placed on the wide sidewalks of the boulevards and do not stand out visually so people tend not to notice them as they are walking.
We only had one difficult moment around the Louvre where there was no path and lots of traffic, but our experience, at least during the relatively quiet month of August, was that using the Velib to ride around Paris was a more pleasant and economical form of travel than the Metro.
The only issue, seemingly common to any bike share system, was the condition of some of the bicycles we tried to use. With Velib, you had to choose the bike from the list of available ones on the terminal screen. We quickly realized that we had to check the bikes before going to the terminal to make sure the one we picked was in good condition. Even then, it was sometimes impossible to remove the bike from its stand so we would have to go back and try again.
As with Bixi, it seems advantageous to get a member's key and so avoid the issue of dealing with the terminal altogether.
In any case, we enjoyed using the Velib so much the first day that we signed up again for the second day. Even with the few issues with the bikes, given the number of trips we made over the two days, we probably saved 20 Euros in Metro tickets.
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