Parisian-style hire bicycles to beat London traffic jams

The distinctive white bicycles that have become a familiar sight on the streets of Paris in recent weeks, helping to cut congestion and pollution, may soon be seen weaving through London's traffic.

London's Mayor, Ken Livingstone, has told the city's transport officials to look at whether the capital could copy the innovative scheme introduced by the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, that allows its citizens to travel by bike at minimal cost.

The Paris Velib, or Freedom Bike, was launched less than four weeks ago, and has already proved a massive hit. The council deposited 20,000 heavy duty bicycles in about 750 metered racks around the city. Anyone who wants to use a bicycle swipes his or her travel card and sets off. The bike can be returned to any of the special racks.

By last weekend, the scheme's organisers reported that each bike was being used, on average, six times a day, implying that the scheme had passed the milestone of one million trips in just three weeks.

Users have to pay £20 a year to join the scheme, give their credit card details, and leave a £150 credit card deposit. Each trips then costs one euro, or about 65p, per half hour.

Thefts are discouraged by the distinctive design of the bicycles, and by the fact that anyone wanting one has to give credit card details. Even so, there have been 50 bicycles torn from their moorings and 180 vandalised. Some users have also cheated by keeping the bikes overnight to make sure that they have one to use in the morning. The organisers have also had to contend with the problem that bikes tend to pile up at the bottom of steep hills, and be in short supply in places such as Montmartre, at higher altitudes, for the obvious reason that people prefer to pedal downhill.

Before such a scheme can be introduced to London, there would have to be some hard negotiating between the city's network of local authorities. Most of London's roads are controlled by 32 borough councils. But despite the political difficulties ahead, Mr Livingstone believes that it could play an important part in cutting traffic jams and reducing pollution for car exhaust. "Cycling is a clean, fast and cheap way to get around London and we have seen an 83 per cent increase in cycling since I became Mayor," he said yesterday.

"I have seen the Paris Freedom Bike scheme, and discussed it with the Mayor of Paris. It clearly works and is highly popular. I have asked transport officials in London to study the Parisian and similar schemes in order to draw up proposals for a scheme which would meet the needs of London. I am sure that we can learn from the success of the Parisian and similar schemes to expand access to cycling in London."

The idea has a curious echo of the infamous "white bicycles" introduced in Holland in 1965 by an anarchist organisation that wanted cars banned from Amsterdam city centre. As a first step, they painted 50 bicycles white and distributed them around the city. The police interpreted this as a threat to public order, and confiscated all the bicycles.

A similar scheme was tried out officially in Cambridge in the 1960s but it was almost impossible to prevent theft and the fleet of bikes disappeared.

When it was tried again in 1993, all 300 bicycles were stolen almost on the first day. But similar schemes have been successfully introduced in other European cities, including Copenhagen and Lyons.