Vélo

Marseille started this ingenious bike-rental system a few years back, along with several other French cities, whereby you can borrow a bike from one of many stands throughout the city for half-hour blocks for free. The idea was to encourage people to use the bikes for short trips (commuting, grocery shopping, going around the neighborhood) instead of taking cars or even public transit. Great idea, huh?

It was an absolutely gorgeous fall weekend – mid-teens Celcius/low 60s Fahrenheit, slightly cloudy and no wind. The leaves are beginning to turn and fall down, too, so it’s pretty much ideal bike riding weather. Drivers are somewhat insane here, so I wouldn’t want to bike to work, for example, but there’s much less traffic (both car and foot) on Sundays, so I ventured out to the vélo stand a couple minutes from my house to see how the bike rental process worked.

In a word: it didn’t.

You have two options for buying a subscription: a short-term pass, good for 1 week, which costs 1€, or a long-term pass, good for 1 year, which costs 5€. Planning ahead, I decided to get a long-term pass, but after pressing a bunch of buttons and navigating through six different screens, I learned you can only do this online.

I walked back home, fired up my laptop, put in all my information – and then they told me I needed to print out a form and mail it in to activate the subscription.

Well, I decide I really want this bike ride, so what the heck, I’ll suck it up and pay an extra Euro for a short-term pass. I go back out to the stand, punch a billion buttons again, and voilà! I have a week-long pass. I pick out a bike, retrieve it from its stand, and I’m good to go.

Not exactly. Turns out this bike had a flat tire, which I didn’t notice before I took it out. So back to the kiosk, where I punch in all my codes again to return the bike. When I try to borrow another bike from the same stand, though, it tells me I can’t. Maybe there’s a minimum amount of time that needs to elapse between when you can return a bike and re-borrow one from the same stand?

I look at the map of stand locations and see there’s another one just a block away. No big deal, I think – I’ll just go over there! At stand #2, I punch my numbers in yet again and select a bike – only to be told there’s an error and sorry, no bike is available (even though there were two bikes sitting right there).

However, this has only increased my determination to be able to go for a bike ride. I go back to the initial stand, punch my numbers in for the nth time, check the other available bike for flat tires and other undesirable characteristics, and then check it out. When I go to the stand to unlock it and, finally, get to ride through the city, I can’t yank the bike out of its stand. It’s completely stuck.

No matter how hard I pull, or at what angle, or while holding down the button on the stand – nothing is getting this bike released. Unfortunately, when I go to the kiosk to look at my account, it says I have a bike charged out. So even though the bike never released from its stand, the machine thinks I have it borrowed. I try to jam it back into the stand while telling the kiosk I’m returning it, but to no avail. I can’t get it either in or out, it’s borrowed on my account, and, predictably, the customer service line is closed because it’s Sunday night.

It’s clear I’m not going to get to ride now, but at this point, I’d settle for just not having a 150€ fee deducted from my bank account. I call a friend here, in a bit of a panic, and explain the situation. He tells me not to worry because this stuff happens all the time – just call the company up in the morning, explain the situation, and they’ll credit back my account.

Sigh.

This morning, not at all looking forward to it because talking on the phone in French is rather frightening (it’s much more difficult than talking face-to-face), I grudgingly call the bike rental number, after looking up all of the vocabulary I think might conceivably be necessary for navigating this conversation.

The phone call lasted about 3 minutes – I explained what happened and gave her my account number, she told me there had been a computer problem last night, and then credited everything back to my account. 1-2-3; pas des problèmes! Wow.

This is pretty indicative of how things work here in France. Great ideas that, in theory, ooze simplicity and ease of access and egalitarianism. In practice, though, they have huge glitches that waste oodles of time and produce mountains of frustration, but ultimately are solved in a snap because the overarching agency has seen all of these problems before.

Lesson learned: start to think more like a Frenchman: don’t worry, be happy – no need for stress or hurry or distress, things just work themselves out.