Remember Vélib, the Parisian bicycle rental service? Well, get ready for Autolib! Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë announced plans to provide 4,000 electric car-share vehicles for in-town transit by next year. As part of the city’s Autolib program, the EVs will be located at several spots around Paris and available for drivers looking to make short trips around town.
Vélib has been a resounding success, and Autolib is the next step in the plan to green Paris. The program will consist of 700 pickup points set all across the city. The program is geared towards people who don’t find themselves in need of a vehicle regularly, but can use it every once in a while. It will be similar to the car-sharing programs that one can find around a number of cities, but will be the first time that a city manages a car share system.
Is encouraging the use of vehicles a good thing? Overall the emissions from this system will be quite small, as they will all be electric vehicles. Still, here’s hoping that Parisians will not be discouraged from still using public transportation. Expect to see this program up and running in 2009.
What a fantastic idea – great to have a Mayor with a real vision. I was astounded by the velib scheme when I first went to Paris after it had been introduced, it really has changed the city so much – and so much for the better.
I can’t see this scheme from discouraging the use of public transport as metro/buses etc are always going to be more practical for everyday use, I imagine it would work like other car share schemes in offerring an alternative to car ownership especially for families. When living in the London suburbs i would cycle to work but found a car share very handy for ocassional use at weekends. As 99% of the times i used the car it was for journeys of less than 25 miles in total i would have welcomed an electric car option.
It will be interesting to see how this scheme works and the impact it has but I can only imagine it being positive.