Photomap

The Velib' city bikes scheme in Paris, France.

My experience of the scheme is that it is un-necessarily awkward to use. Getting a 'short-term account', on the internet was fairly straightforward, but they give you an eight digit code that you have to remember, in addition to your own four digit PIN.

It gets quite tiresome entering all those digits into the unresponsive control unit. My experience was that unless you followed all the steps correctly it would shut you out and you'd have to start again from the beginning. That software needs a lot of work. On returning to my hotel I find I can't login to my account to check my hire record, probably because it is asking for the name field, which I did not have to give on registration. (In their email to me the salutation was simply 'Dear Client'.)

It is worth being extra sure that your bike is docked properly and if you enter all your codes you can get a printed receipt. Several of the bikes I tried were duds, usually the seat has been turned around by other users to indicate a problem.