just do it

After bicycles, Paris tries self-service cars

自助自行车之后，巴黎推出自助汽车

Readers have asked for an update on the Vélib scheme, which has equipped Paris with thousands of self-service bikes since last July. The almost free bikes are no longer a novelty. They are part of the landscape, already a bit last summer, mon cher. So now, Mayor Bertrand Delanoe has come up with a grander wheeze, which is to be announced for his campaign for re-election in a month or two. This consists of self-service cars that you can pick up and park almost where you want, like the bikes.

  巴黎七月的时候推出了自助自行车，现在，它可不再是个新鲜的东西了。现在它只是街头的其中一道风景罢了。现在，德拉诺市长又想出了一个令人喘气的新招，这项措施将在一两个月内举行的重新选举时推出来为他的阵营造势。这项措施就是自助汽车，你可以开上车子然后像停单车一样把它停在你想停的地方。

First the bikes: The scheme has if anything been too successful. Tomorrow, just about all 15,000 will be in use as people, many of whom have not pedalled since child-hood, attempt to beat the all-out public transport strike. On normal days, the parking bays are not enough to cope with the rush of morning commuters, leading to bike rage as people struggle to dock their machines down town near their work. I have given up using them on weekdays because I was spending more time looking for a hitching post than freewheeling downhill to work.

  首先是自行车：这项计划太成功了。14号将有15000辆自助自行车投入使用，许多小时候都没有骑过自行车的人，将能够有幸骑上自行车，给公众交通罢工带来冲击。平常的时候，单车根本就满足不了早上高峰人群的需要，大量的单车就会涌到人们工作地点附近的停放点那。我已经不愿意在周末去用它们，因为得花大量的时间去找一个单车泊位。

The colder wet weather and a few accidents have not done much to dim the enthusiasm with which Parisians use Vélibs to get to work or wobble home at night when taxis vanish (There are fewer taxis in Paris than before World War Two and most don't work at night). The bikes have been used for eight million trips so far and there will be 20,000 by the end of the year, according to JC Decaux, the company that provides them in return for city advertising space. There has been one death -- a woman in her 50s who was crushed last month when a truck cut her off on the inside of a turn. The bikes now carry warnings to be careful of trucks and three training courses have been opened to help debutants get the hang of la bicyclette (details on www.paris.fr City Hall site).

湿冷的天气和一些交通事故并不能减低巴黎人骑自助自行车去上班或者是晚上没了出租车之后骑上自行车蹒跚地回家的热情。（二战后巴黎晚上少了很多出租车，大部分出租车晚上都不工作。）这些自行车已经被使用了800万趟，到今年年底为止自行车数量将达到两万辆。现在已经有了一人死亡，上个月有位50岁的女人被车碾死了，一辆车在一个内转弯的地方把她切车了两半。现在车子上标上了小心卡车的警告标识，还开了3个训练课来帮助初学者熟悉自行车。

Delanoe's self-service car scheme, code-named 'ALS' (Automobiles-en-Libre-Service), aims to put an initial 2,000 electric vehicles on the streets in a couple of year's time. It will build on existing hourly-rental car services that already operate with municipal blessing in Paris, and cities and resorts in Europe and the USA. At present about 135 small ordinary cars can be rented by the hour from three Paris firms at 25 locations. They require reservation. "There are already a small number of such cars", Delanoe said recently on television. "The idea is to have thousands of them, freely available, non-polluting." [The picture at top is existing petrol-driven share-car]

  德拉诺的自助汽车项目简称为ALS，目标是先期投放2000辆电动汽车。这是按现有的小时租车服务的基础之上建立的，这种租车服务在巴黎，欧洲的一些城市和度假圣地以及美国已经出现。目前有3个公司的25个租车站能够提供大约135辆又小又普通的车子来满足按小时租车的需要。他们需要预约，“已经有了一小部分这些车子，我的这个计划是提供数千辆这样的车子，自由使用，无污染。”

Delanoe will seek bids for vehicles that can be picked up with no notice by subscribers with electronic swipe cards, like the Vélib bikes. There will be dozens and eventually hundreds of stations. Drivers may be able to drop them off anywhere, according to one version of the scheme which has been circulating at City Hall. The outlines may become clearer from a day's conference on l'auto-partage (car-sharing) which Delanoe is staging in Paris on Thursday.  

The idea is to complement the Vélib by enabling Parisians to carry passengers and loads on short trips without having to rent or running their own vehicles, says the Mayor. Delanoe's team calculates that one communal-use car replaces five to 10 private vehicles. Only 43 percent of Paris households have cars, five percent of which are on the road at any moment. Roughly half the city's traffic comes from outside. The ALS vehicles -- which may I suspect be more glorified golf cart than car -- appear likely to be more useful for short trips by the city's relatively pampered residents rather than helping out the banlieusards who pile into Paris every day.

The popular mayor wants to make Paris the "Eco-capital of the world" and has promised to cut green-house gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020. His administration has sought to deter drivers by creating congestion with narrower road space, but he has rejected the idea of a congestion charge like London's. Instead, with buses and Metro trains near saturation, he wants to lure people onto bikes and the self-service cars, which will rent for a few euros per hour, depending on kilometres driven.

Delanoe, a Socialist, is almost certainly going to be re-elected in the spring. But even if he is beaten by Françoise de Panafieu, his challenger from President Sarkozy's UMP party, the car scheme will likely survive. Panafieu is proposing an identical system, calling for an initial 2,500 vehicles. We do not yet know who will pay for these schemes. The answer will probably be a barter deal with like Decaux's supply and maintenance of 20,000 free bikes in return for the lease of hundreds of advertising panels.

Delanoe, by the way, gets around Paris in an electric-powered car. He tried to put Bill Clinton on a Vélib last month. Clinton wanted to, but his guards would not let the former president risk his life in Paris traffic.