Cycling has become increasingly popular in recent years, spurred on by many factors, including increasing concern for personal fitness, rising costs of running a car, gridlocked city streets, an increasing number of segregated cycle lanes, and the social acceptability of bike use — once seen as a poor person’s means of transport, but now a sign of the fit and ecologically friendly citizen. Like many products, bikes can be bought either as a tangible purchase, or as a service. While bike retailers in Western Europe have been enjoying a boom time, many rental schemes have emerged to loan out bikes as a service. For a long time there have been bike rental companies who rent out bikes to tourists for a day or a week or so. Accessibility to a bike has not generally been a strong point of these operations, as the renter must generally collect the bike from a predetermined place and return it to the same point some time later. More recently, many towns have developed schemes to rent out bikes just at the point where a consumer wants one, and just for the length of time that they need it. The principle is just like hiring a taxi — you pick it up where and when you need it, you leave it at your destination, then repeat the process if you are making a return journey. Making sure that bikes are available just at the time and place that people need them can be very difficult to manage, especially if the bikes are provided as a community service without the full intervention of commercial market principles. 

The city of Rennes in Western France has pioneered the development of an urban cycle rental scheme, and learned how to tackle some of the problems of accessibility to the system. The first bike rental scheme was established in Rennes in 1998, and the current scheme, called Vélo STAR, has been operated since 2009 by the leading French transport operator Keolis SA. The contract between Rennes Metropole and Keolis SA has been renewed for the period 2013-2017.

The city of Rennes in Western France has pioneered the development of an urban cycle rental scheme, and learned how to tackle some of the problems of accessibility to the system. The first bike rental scheme was established in Rennes in 1998, and the current scheme, called Vélo STAR, has been operated since 2009 by the leading French transport operator Keolis SA. The contract between Rennes Metropole and Keolis SA has been renewed for the period 2013-2017. had been provided by the previous operator of the cycle scheme — Clear Channel - which provided only 25 stations with 12 cycle stands in each, and limited the number of registered users of the scheme to 5000 at any one time.....

Case study review questions. 

1. Evaluate the role of technology in its widest sense in making bikes available to users. 

2. In designing their system, what factors should Keolis have considered when estimating the overall number of bikes needed, the location of the rental stations and the number of parking places for each station? 

3. How should Keolis balance the need for easy access to bikes by genuine users with the need to prevent theft and abuse?