Marseille Le Velo: Liberation, up to a point
Posted on Thursday 6 August 2009 by Martin Hayman
On previous visits to Marseille we had noticed people skimming by on the grey system-rental bikes offered by the municipality. This year we decided to join them.
It’s easy to find a ‘Le Velo’ rental station. They cluster thickly around the Vieux-Port and the Bourse area where most tourists stay. They vary in capacity but most have half-a-dozen or more bike docks. Each station has a mini-tower to house the rental screen and a city map with rental locations. The obverse of the tower is given over to advertising, the principal revenue stream for the system’s operator, JC Decaux.
The first task is to release a bike, using the station’s touch-screen and card-reader. Problem: any screen facing the brilliant Mediterranean sun is illegible, even when shaded by a newspaper. We walked on to another, facing away from the light. To business. Instructions (in French only) prompt a two-part process, the first to buy a buy a long-term or short-term (7-day) subscription, the second to select and release a bike. Now I read French fluently and have used a variety of online payment systems. I also really wanted to rent a bike. But I can honestly say I have never encountered a system that so successfully frustrates the intended purchaser. With a subtle and obdurate recursiveness I can only describe as Gallic, it repeatedly dumped me back at the start screen with the smug error message ‘Transaction annulled’. I lack patience for this sort of thing and had it not been for the calm encouragement of my wife, I think I would have blown a gasket.
Anyway, we got there. One buys a 7-day subscriber card, personalised with one’s own choice of 4-figure code, at the cost of 1 euro (plus an alarmingly high deposit of 150 euros), using the familiar plastic-card reader and keypad. Then one inserts the new subscriber card into a second slot reader, keys the personal code (on the touch-screen, this time), and is presented on screen with a choice of bikes at the numbered docks at the station. One walks over to the chosen dock, presses a button to unlock it, and the bike comes away with a bit of tug. Hooray!
Now to the bikes. These are very solidly built unisex machines, rather like a moped, with heavy-duty plastic shrouds to the wheels, steering and transmission, a wire basket with built-in cable lock, and a robust stand. The rider is enjoined to verify the brakes, built-in lights, and bell before moving off. The bike didn’t feel very nice and seemed hard work, even in the lowest of the three Shimano gears, as we headed up to the maze of streets on the further side of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de la Garde, heading for the Corniche. Alas what the map does not show is that the steep alleys of this quartier are linked by flights of steps. ‘Le Velo’ is not intended for portages: with all that equipment, plus the massive capture hook on the right-hand side of the down tube, it must weigh 25 kilos at least. We bumped the bikes back down the other side to the Corniche where there was another rental station.
Now the game with Velib-type schemes is to swap the bike before the first free rental period is up. In theory, you pay nothing to get around. In practice, it plays out rather differently, at least for novices such as we were. Bikes on the station at this high point of the road to the Prado beaches are fewer, confirming evidence from Paris and Brussels that the fleet slides downhill to the lowest points on the network. However, three were available here. Or so it appeared. I slotted my bike back in to a free dock and tried to choose another. I was baffled to be told I was still in possession of a rental bike, so might not take another out. I tried again several times, only getting the menu of available bikes after several minutes. Why the tardy response? In retrospect, I think the delay is by design, to stop the wily from spoofing the system by swiftly checking a known-good bike in and out, so avoiding the next half-hour’s charge of 1 euro. I find this rather unsporting.
But now we ran into a new snag. Of the three untried bikes racked at the station, only one showed up on screen as available for selection. That was the one with the nearly flat front tyre. The menus warn that not all bikes present may be available (because awaiting maintenance); but the bikes that weren’t showing up had clearly had their tyres pumped up. Perhaps their refreshed state had not yet been notified to the system?
I bumped down the hill, the tyre’s valve bashing the roadway at each wheel revolution. Surely even the Schwalbe Marathon could not stand this sort of abuse? I strongly hoped the tyre would not blow off the rim in the growing evening traffic. At the next station, a completely eviscerated tyre on one bike showed that they do.
And once again the bikes we would have chosen, pumped and ready to go, were not showing up as available: I would have to continue with what I had. The soft front tyre was exacerbated by a loose headset and I couldn’t get the saddle to stay put. It was all becoming a bit of a chore; and besides, it was time for an apero. We left the bikes and walked down to the Vieux Port.
As we sat on the terrace with our pastis, young things came streaming past on rental bikes. How did they manage that?
As we know, London plans to install a bike rental system for launch in May 2010. That’s pretty soon. No contract has been awarded yet and the word is that the most experienced operator, JC Decaux, won’t bid because advertising rights are not included. I make no comment on the business model, but based on our experience in Marseille, I would make four operational recommendations:
1) Work the IT system’s interface design hard: stress-test its usability to make it foolproof in several languages. Marseille’s ‘Le Velo’ is poor in this regard.
2) Fully resource maintenance. A significant number of bikes were not fit for purpose and should not have been in service, with flat tyres, slipping gears, loose headset (almost all bikes tried), and slack brakes (most bikes).
3) Ensure synchronization of check-in and check-out, so the IT system ‘knows’ in real time which bikes are available and which out of service. This may be a process rather than an IT issue (tardy reporting by maintenance staff).
4) Maximize uptime of rental stations: on subsequent days renting bikes, we encountered several stations that refused to read subscriber cards, so ‘trapping’ returned, usable bikes and stranding would-be onward renters. We learned to distrust any outlying rental station with a full complement of bikes!