The New York Times carried a story today (30 October 2009), under the bylines of Steven Erlanger and Maïa de la Baume, about the vandalism to the Vélib' bicycles in Paris. But in typical NY Times fashion, it's yesterday's news. There's not much here that The Times (of London) correspondent Charles Bremner didn't already blog about three and a half months ago (16 July 2009). Including trotting out the same sociologist to explain the phenomenon.
What's particularly egregious about this story, however, is that it comes precisely at the time when the Vélib' vandalism trend has dramatically reversed! I state this purely from my own anecdotal experience, but I would be immensely surprised if the statistics didn't back me up. Until just a few weeks ago, almost every Vélib' station that I visited had plenty of bikes with flat tires, missing chains, loose parts, etc. In the past couple of weeks, however, almost every bike is in good working order.
This goes for bikes across town: in the 10th, in the 16th, in the 5th and 4th, in the 8th and the 9th, down in the 13th, up in the 19th. My experience is far from comprehensive, but the change in all these places is too consistent to be coincidence.
Is it the cool weather that's made the difference? Or the boredom of the vandals, who've moved on to other things? Has the city's campaign had an effect? (They've put the anti-vandalism posters out for a second go-round now.) Or have the repair efforts been redoubled? My guess is a combination of weather and boredom. Regrettably, Erlanger and de la Baume missed the chance to report on the real story, and enlighten us on what's just happened.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Curiously, the moderators at the NY Times would not post these same remarks as a comment to the article on their site.
ReplyDelete