Vandals appear to have learned how to pry bikes free from stands and go on joyrides until automatic locks are triggered after 24 hours, according to Agemob, the company that operates the Velib system. While vandalism has always been a problem for the public bicycle sharing system, the company said that for the past month the number of bikes disappearing had nearly tripled to 640 per week.
"At the moment, we're missing 3,000 bikes" out of the fleet of some 20,000 regular and electric bicycles, said Sylvain Raifaud, head of Agemob. "We don't know where the bikes are, because they don't have GPS chips."
He appealed for local authorities to help it find the bikes and said the lack of such a large number of bikes leaves Velib struggling to satisfy users. "The remaining bikes are being used much more and are more worn out," said Raifaud. That also meant the batteries of electric bikes did not have enough time to recharge. "This has resulted in entire stations with unusable bikes" leaving "users very frustrated," he added.
Launched in 2007, Velib bikes were used for 49.3 million trips last year. Raifaud said ridership had been increasing, with May's figures up by 16 percent over last year.