Toulouse France has a bicycle rental program that is rapidly growing. Many European cities have been developing their bicycle rental programs and Toulouse is no exception. I will run a 4-5 part series on what it is, how it works, how to sign up, and how to use it: regular users and tourists. It is very easy, convenient, and inexpensive.
The basic way it works is this. You can rent for a day, a week, a month, short term but longer than a month, or a year. One year is only 25€, one month is 10€, one week is 5€, and one day is 1€. That is pretty cheap. There are stations throughout the city where the bikes are locked. When you sign up for a contract you get a card that you can swipe at the station and then the bike unlocks and you can ride it away. You can keep the bike all day or return it to any of the nearly 250 stations throughout the city.
All bikes are connected to a central computer server when they are at a station so you can get real time info on availability of bikes at the nearest stations to you. This can come in handy when the weather is better and more people rent bikes. Some stations have been empty even in the winter on nice days. One drawback is that the stations are more centered around the city center. There are stations at metro stops outside of the center but not as many scattered throughout the neighborhoods.
All bikes are equipped with a basket, a light on the front, a cuff to protect your pants, and a lock that is built in to the basket. The bikes also have reflective strips so you are very visible at night. They are 3 speed bikes but since Toulouse is largely flat, it is not an issue. All the bikes look the same and have fenders and Velo Toulouse signs on them so I think they are not stolen much. Thy look like slightly more modern beach cruiser type bikes so they are comfortable, upright, and easy to ride. They are not, however, aerodynamic and sporty. If you must ride a sporty bike these are not for you. If you live in a small space and don’t have room for a bike in your apt this is perfect for you.
What else would you like to know about the program?
Here is a link to the official site, in French though.
Here is a picture of one of the bikes. 
I’ll take some more pictures as this series develops so you can get a better idea of the bikes.
Popularity: 27% [?]
I wonder if any of the cities that go to the Velib (as they are called in Paris) will ever give credit to Lyon, which was the first French city to have them? You may start feeling the crunch as they’re doing in Paris. You may not have trouble finding a bike, but returning it to a place within a block or two of where you want to go, could be a problem. You didn’t mention the rather large deposit you must make which is probably the real reason not many are stolen. Plus people, in my opinion, are a bit more honest in France.
More to come, stay tuned. When we rented bikes 2 summers ago, before the official Velib program started, there was a deposit also. If you were a tourist and just wanting to rent for the day or a couple of days while you were in town the deposit was in the form of an authorization on your credit card. Once the bikes were returned the authorization expired and we had no problems. If there were a problem we could have had our card automatically charged but I hear that rarely happens.
Seems like you pretty much covered everything. What a great program. I’ll keep it in mind for when next I find myself on your side of the pond.
Bob, I actually think Rennes was the first one to offer the free bike system in France – they started on June 6, 1998.
I have heard about Lyon being the first but Sam does know everything so I bet it might have been Rennes. I wonder if it matters free vs the rental idea. 2 summers ago we rented bikes for 2€ a day and I know you could rent then by the month but you had to go to a trailer and talk with people and there were not that many around and a few times they were empty. These are the fully automated ones. Which city was the first to have these? I saw them in Antwerp, Ghent, and Brussells 2 summers ago, fully automated.
Oops! I wish I had read this before posting on my blog that the idea came from Paris. That having been said, if the idea hadn’t taken off in Paris we wouldn’t have seen it in Toulouse, in my opinion. (Justification for not changing my post, says he.)
Aren’t you supposed to be doing a translation and not procrastinating?
Hello,
I want to ask you a question about deposit in the system. We rent a bike in Nice (our abonnement is 1 week) and then returned the bike to the boxes. The box showed the message: “Thanks for using, see you”. Next day we tried to rent a bike again. But the box said “you can not have two bikes at a time.” After that we realized that there is a problem in the system. We directly write a message to “velobleu.org”. Next day my bike is shown as returned in the website after 39 hours. But the cost field was 0 euro. When I checked my bank account I saw that 155 euros were taken from my credit card in addition to the abonnement cost 5 euros. I want to understand whether it is the deposit for the bikes and will be returned after one week or it is a cost for a lost bike?
Thanks in advance.
I don’t know the answer, but in Toulouse there is a deposit but I think it is closer to 250€