Perspectives on the Growing Market for Public Bicycles: Focus on France and the UK

This paper describes how the "servicized" bicycle could perhaps be considered one of the more significant personal mobility innovations of the past decade. From a single public bicycles service that operated in 2000 in Rennes, the number of services has grown to more than 460 worldwide, which includes major cities in middle-income countries over the past decade. Due to the timely convergence of various social and technological trends, and despite the passage of five decades since the first pilot program, public bicycles services have affirmatively entered the transport policy agenda in recent years. While Paris' Velib’ system is perhaps most widely-known, similar (and ever-more-refined) schemes are appearing on the streets of a wide variety of cities and towns, with an equally-diverse range of service models and a growing number of adaptations to suit different urban contexts. In this paper, the authors first present a global review of the public bicycles concept and the pathway through which the present situation has arisen. The authors then analyze and contrast the French market’s 32 operational services with the embryonic British market, in terms of operators, contracts, local authorities’ initiatives and present lessons from Paris, Rennes, London and Blackpool. And the authors list successes and limits of public bicycles. Finally, the authors discuss each country’s market potential and prospects for the future development of public bicycles systems generally.