Once, it was the pride of Paris. The French capital’s self-service bike-share scheme, Vélib, was copied from London to Seattle and seen as proof that large cities could revolutionise green transport.

But the famous chunky grey bikes have virtually ground to a standstill after the chaotic rollout of a new generation of hi-tech models by the scheme’s new operator. Blighted by glitches, delays and a dwindling number of users, the new bikes have become a public relations disaster for the French capital and could even threaten the political future of the left at Paris city hall.

When Vélib – or “freedom bikes” – were launched in 2007, Paris was not the first city to introduce a municipal bike-share scheme, but it was the largest.

Last year, after a decade run by the outdoor advertising company JCDecaux – a period not without its own problems, such as theft and vandalism – the Vélib deal was put to tender. A new operator, the French-Spanish consortium Smovengo, won a €700m (£615m) deal to run the service for the next 15 years, promising to introduce high-tech internet-connected bikes, one third of which were electric.

Old bikes were quickly removed and docking stations dug up in order to be replaced in January. But four months on, less than half of the target of 1,400 new docking stations have been created. The delays are so bad the company is having to pay millions of euros in penalties.

Crucially, many of the docking stations that have been installed have been beset by software and electrical problems, forcing Smovengo to use batteries to power some stations. The glitches were compounded last month when technicians began striking over working rights and conditions.

The number of Vélib subscribers has dropped from 290,000 last year to 219,000, some of whom have won compensation from city hall.

“I’ve basically given up,” said a 50-year-old public sector worker who had used Vélib bikes for a decade. “It has become impossible to get a bike. You’re lucky if you find a docking station in service, but even then if you try to access bikes, you find they’re all blocked. The customer service is awful.”

Simon Labouret of the cycling group Paris en Selle (Paris in the Saddle) agrees. “Users feel exasperated and angry at a system that doesn’t work,” he said. “This was a service that was very popular and used by a large number of Parisians. When the scheme worked, one third of bikes on the road in Paris were Vélibs. It was a good way of getting to work or university for people who didn’t have their own bikes, because not everyone in Paris has space for their own and the rate of bike theft is very high.

“The current Vélib fiasco is at complete odds with Paris’s objective to increase bike lanes and get more people cycling.”

The Socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has demanded emergency measures to get the scheme working. But patience is wearing thin as the saga becomes a political minefield. Hidalgo had been seen as a key Socialist opposition figure during the presidency of the centrist Emmanuel Macron, but she is under increasing political pressure from all sides over the Vélib trouble.

Hidalgo said in a statement this week: “Let’s not deny the reality: the transition to the new Vélib is going badly. Since the start of the year we’ve been confronted by a series of unacceptable disappointments. Parisians, who are very attached to these self-service bikes, consider that the system they loved has been ruined. We must have a service that works, as fast as possible, to regain users’ trust.”



On Thursday, Smovengo promised to streamline the Vélib system, open more docking stations connected to the electrical grid, and set up about 800 docking stations by the end of June. The firm also vowed to better communicate with users.