Love France!

Anybody had an "freedom fries" lately? Who were they kidding? We love the French. We're all worried about global warming and looking for innovative ideas that will help us use less energy. In Paris they are introducing what looks to be a wonderful program that will make it very easy for people to jump on and off a bike with minimal cost and hassle:

Velib', as the service is called, is a word made up by blending together "velo" (bike) and "liberte" (liberty). The idea is flexibility: You grab a bike from any station around town - they pop up every 330 yards or so - and park it at any other station. That means you don't have to haul the bike back to your hotel if your feet hurt or it starts raining (link).

Click the link to learn about the specifics. It sounds like a wonderful idea. We have something similar here in New York, but it's not quite as green as bikes. Zip Car works in a similar manner. You sign up for their service and then you can easily reserve one of their many cars parked conveniently all over the city. Drive it for as long as you reserved it and then just return it to its parking spot.

Now what I like about both ideas is that we are sharing the bikes and the cars. The idea that we all need our own individual things is losing out little by little, and that reduces our use of energy. Now whether or not Zip Cars would actually lower use or not is to be determined. But what if that was the norm in New York? What if everyone just shared a certain number of cars and the rest of travel was done on public transportation? Not a horrible idea. Seems like a step in the right direction to me.

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