Posts Tagged ‘paris’

Pithy Advice for the Person Who Ends Up Running San Francisco’s Bike Share Program

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Remember back in the day, back when Clear Channel “promised” that they would provide a Velib-style bicycle sharing program for San Francisco? Let’s dig up a press release crowing all about that from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA). Ah yes, from the “Transit Shelter Advertising and Maintenance Agreement” with Clear Channel Outdoor, Inc.:

“The agreement also requires Clear Channel to provide a Bicycle-Sharing Program, at the SFMTA’s request, details of which will be negotiated in an amendment to the Agreement.”

Details! Oh noes. Well Clear Channel looked at the details of running a bike share program and decided that they didn’t want to do it. Of course, they were not “required” to do Jack despite what the SFMTA thought. Isn’t that funny? 

Now let’s imagine that you’re in charge of San Francisco’s bike-share program. What should you do? Let’s start with the good stuff and then worry about the details, the gritty nitty.

But first, let’s check in with Jessica Alba in Paris on a Velib. She’s in your corner:

 

All right, let’s go:

1. Junkets, junkets, junkets!

Try to get in as many “fact-finding missions” as possible early on. You’re the CEO, right? So, first thing you do is jet off to France, or D.C. or Montreal, bidness-class. Start a blog to post vacation photos of you on a Velib and complain about how you have to spend so much time away from your kids. Enjoy yourself, it’s going to go downhill from here.

2. Make the program as small as possible.

This is key. The bigger the program, the more headaches you’ll have. If you listen to people who tell you that you need to have a “critical mass” to be sustainable, you’ll have 5000 bikes on the streets – that means 5000 things to fret over every day. The Feds might give you millions to get started, but they’re not going to give you millions every year. As far as you’re concerned, a bike share program is a bike share program.

3. Think of a catchy name for your program.

I don’t know, BikeConnect (if Alex Tourk would license the name)? How about City BikeShare, CalBike, BikeCal, SFBike, BikeSF, FoggyBike, or Frisco a Go Go? I’m at a loss…

And now, decisions to be made:

1. Which bikes to use?

In the Parisian program, the heavy bikes come from Hungary and they cost $1000 per. This is both good and bad, because you want to have the bikes well-built in order to survive the rigors of heavy use, but you don’t want to lose too much money every time one dissappears. I think it’d be impossible to charge $1000 to a San Francscan when the bike s/he just checked out got lifted by a thief, so you’re going to lose big bucks on theft. On the other hand, if you go the cheap route and use inexpensive mountain-type bikes, they’ll get stripped for parts with a quickness. You want bike thieves to think these are custom-made with no reuseable parts. Bixi bikes are cheaper (I hope) – perhaps they’d be a good starting point?

2. How much to charge users who don’t return bikes?

The Parisian government now subsidizes share program operator JC Decaux’s losses to the tune of millions of dollars per year. This is despite the fact that this company makes a mint from the 1600 advertising spaces given to them to pay for the program. If you are “too nice” to customers and only charge $50 for a bike they don’t return, then the customers won’t really care if their rental goes missing. On the other hand, if you try to charge the full replacement value, your customers won’t stand for it.

3. What about vandalism?

What about it – the little monsters are going to mess you up. They’re going to make it their business to make you want to go out of business. How will you react to the taggers who will paint over whatever they can? Now, program operators don’t have to deal with this issue in La Rochelle or Lyon, but in Paris, that’s a different story. Well guess what? We’re going to be just like Paris, having bikes with broken keels and lost keels. Deal with it. How about getting the City to cover all vandalism costs? That would help.

4. What about helmets?

You know, France has different attitudes about certain things. For example, they’ve got 58 nuclear panner plants and they’re building more, and they have a huge nuclear waste dump in Champagne, of all places. So, when you talk to the French about helmets for non-Tour-de-France-bike-riders, they don’t like it. Could San Francisco somehow rent out a smelly used helmet along with the bike? Doubtful. Could customers carry their own helmets? Sure, some of them would, but carrying around a helmet goes against the very nature of the whole program, which is designed to appeal to the general non-bike-riding public. In France, they tolerate deaths due to share program customers not having helmets. Will San Francisco?

5. What about hills?

Now let’s say your customer wants to go from a bike station at the top of Nob Hill down to Embarcadero Station – that’s a straight shot down California, it would take about five minutes, easy peasy. But who’s going to pay for the right to pedal a heavy bike back up to the top of Nob Hill? Should you give people who turn bikes in at the Nob Hill station more time? Certainly. Should you go ahead and just make that a free ride? Should you give these hardy souls a credit for future trips? Should you just pay jobless people to ride bikes uphill? Should you load up a truck and have an employee redistributing bikes all day long? Should you just not have a Nob Hill station? Don’t know.

There are no easy solutions for you. You’ll be made sport of in the pages of SFist and SFGate, San Francisco’s online newspaper. It’ll be endless. The Velib program works in Paris because of all that sweet, sweet street advertising money from all those signs. You won’t have access to that kind of dough, not in San Francisco.

Oh well, that’s why you’ll get paid the big bucks. 

Good luck, Chuck.

After the jump, all the places you should junket to, before the cash runs out. 

(more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in bikes | No Comments »

ABC News, Princess Diana and the Health Care Debate – Point /Counterpoint

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

Here’s the headline and the first sentence from a recent ABC News bit:

“Princess Diana’s Death Offers Lessons for Health Care Debate, 12 Years Later. In Britain’s Beloved Royal’s Death, Experts Find Guidance in French Health System”

“The Mercedes 600 carrying Princess Dianaand her companion Dodi Fayed was traveling more than 85 miles per hour when it hit a concrete pillar head-on in the Place D’Alma underpass, crumbling like an accordion.”

diana_paristunnel_wideweb__470x362,0

1. No, the car was not a “Mercedes 600,” (which was called the Dictator’s Mercedes, used since 1963 by the likes of Nicolae Ceauşescu, Josip Broz-Tito, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Enver Hoxha, Leonid Brezhnev, Kim Il-sung,  Idi Amin Dada, and Ferdinand Marcos), nor was it the extended wheelbase, armored Mercedes S600 that Diana was using earlier in the day. It was a Mercedes S280 (or S 280, or 280 S, with a W140 body, registration 688LTV75) actually, one that allegedly wasn’t fixed properly after being stolen for parts earlier in the year. In fact, the S600 in question was used as a decoy to try to befuddle the paparazzi.

This is not the writer making a typo, it’s an error that tells you that Diana is merely being used a hook to get a convo going about the issue du jour, health care.

Does the writer (or editor, whomever) understand what she’s talking about? No. Did she negligently copy a mistake made by others before her? Apparently. Institutionally, would it be easy for the writer to fix her mistake at this point? No, she “knows” she’s right, because she’s a professional writer, steeped in the warm bath of the MSM. Do you think she’d poke through her numerous comments looking for new insights, or do you think she’d generally dismiss her commenters as a bunch of ”crazies?” (I too might generally consider her commenters crazies as well, but it doesn’t mean they’re not right about any particular issue, of course).  

Of course the S280 didn’t have its identifying badge on the back, so that makes things a little harder  to keep straight. (You see, the Eurotrash, they tend to be sensitive about such matters, matters like not having the best S-Klasse car available.) Anyway, the goal of using a decoy at the Ritz Hotel so long ago was to confuse journalists, and that trick is still fooling them today. Oh well.

 2. Now back in the day you had cars that would get crushed “like an accordian,” but modern vehicles are designed with crumple zones so that the front third of the vehicle gets accordianed leaving the passenger compartment relatively intact. (In Diana’s particular case, she wasn’t wearing her seat belt, but it might not have helped her too much anyway.) The car was crushed exactly not like an accordian, it behaved exactly as it was designed. (Ironically, Mercedes was a pioneer with this type of safety design, with a actual patent to its credit from 1959.) I’d be hard-pressed to think of another car model that would have been better for her to be in, actually.

Which do you prefer, accuracy or a bunch of adjectives and damned similes strung together? Is that a false choice? If the “good writers” (“Oh, she’s such a good writer” or “Oh, you’re style is wonderful!”) of the MSM have their druthers, it’s generally similes first, accuracy second. Oh well.
2.1.This concludes the nitpicky part. Mind you, we just discussed part of the first sentence, complete with flagrant, correctable errors that jump out at you. Not much point in continuing that, except to ask how does the writer know that the car was going not just but “more than 85 MPH”? Sounds  a bit on the high side – I don’t believe there’s a consensus on that score. Again, oh well. If the details aren’t important, why are there in the first place? Decoration? The World Wonders.

3. Scoop and Run vs. Stay and Play. You just can’t tell if the half-assed “Franco-German” approach to emergency doctoring contributed to Diana’s death. Now, of course a homeless person in San Francisco almost certainly would have gotten better treatment in similar circumstances. The SFFD or whomever would have pried open the car’s carcass as if it were a tin can and hustled her over to S.F. General with a quickness.

But you don’t know how it would have gone. At least with Scoop and Run, you know you gave it the old college try. There have been incidents in America similar to that of Natasha Richardson, but they are rare. Why? Lawyers. I beg of you, Monsier, watch yourself. Be on guard. America is place full of lawyers, lawyers everywhere, everywhere.So that’s a drain on society, but fear of lawsuits means that EMTs and first responders tend to try harder in America. They lack the cavalier attitude some French might have. Just saying.

(And the way, “Stay and Play” is a horrible phrase. Supporters of this approach should try to think of a better name. Yish.)

4. So, why did Diana die? A drunk driver, plus a flighty princess who encouraged speeding whether she knew it or not, plus a Parisian tunnel design with exposed pillars that wouldn’t pass muster in poorest part of Alabama, plus Stay and Play (as a possible factor, I mean she certainly had traumatic injuries from a horrific accident, no argument here) – add all that up and there’s your answer. (A conspiracy-free answer, you might note).

And as far as getting rid of the “Anglo-American” emergency response doctrine, well that’s not on the table. Why? Cause the lawyers will tear apart any kind of “well, we used to Scoop and Run but that got too expensive” explanation as to why it took 100 minutes to get the E.R.

So what does Diana’s death have to do with the American health care system? Not all that much, it would seem.

Just saying.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized, health | Comments Off

Bixi, the Bike Taxi, in Golden Gate Park – Testing Out the Canadian Bike Rental System

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

The Bixi short-term bike-share roadshow blew into town today, however briefly, to show us how they do it up in Montreal.

But first things first – a quick report on what our visiting bike-sharing visitors were surprised by in GGP:

1. The summertime cold and wind;

2. The homeless dude with a guitar case who flipped out, attacked a jogger, and had to get taken down by a bunch of Park Rangers and SFPD officers;

3. Noisy raptors circling low overhead; and

4. San Francisco’s famous bicycle built for four. It almost stole the show. See?

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Program Director Andy Thornley with SF Weekly’s Matt Smith et ux, ”quad” liberi, all together on a charming, fully-functioning bicycle. Click to expand:

IMG_7752 copy

So Bixi is just like the Parisian Velib program except the Bixi bikes aren’t as heavy, which is a good thing. But the Bixis are still heavy though. And if you happen to be six foot one and a ton of fun, you’ll find that the frame is strong enough but that the seatpost doesn’t go up high enough. Otherwise the whole program is as you would expect.   

The mise-en-scene today:

IMG_7741 copy 

In France, they incentivize people to drop the bikes off at the tops of hills. If a program like this ever gets off the ground in San Francisco, what would it take to deal with stations at the tops of our mini-mountains?

Bienvenue à Montréal!

IMG_7742 copy

It’s enormous work keeping a program like this going. The little monsters of France have effectively managed to steal, vandalize, and otherwise mangle the entire original fleet – at a replacement cost of thousands of dollars each, that’s a tough row to hoe.  

IMG_7732 copy

If you want to make a system like this work in San Francisco, you’d need  a subsidy from the government, the way that MUNI and BART and Golden Gate ferries get subsidies.

And where will people get the helmets they’ll need? Whoops. (In gay Paris, they take a c’est la vie approach to matters like this.)

All in all, I’d rather have a regular bike and a U-lock than a Bixi program membership. But if you can’t find a cab or you just missed your bus, you might like having the option of a short-term bike rental.

We’ll see.

 
City CarShare Cohosts Bike Sharing Demonstration.

Exploring New Trends in Green Mobility

WHAT:   A one-day opportunity for the public to ride bikes from a bike share system. Bike sharing allows people to pick up a bike from one station, travel to their destination and return the bike to any other station in a network. City CarShare will be conducting a survey among participants to get their feedback on the concept, the equipment and their level of support for bike sharing in San Francisco.
 
WHEN:   Sunday, August 2, 10 am- 3:30 pm
 
WHERE:   Golden Gate Park, (just inside the car-free Sunday road closure on JFK Drive at Conservatory Drive East)
 
WHY:   To allow the public to test-ride the bikes and learn more about this eco-friendly mode of urban transportation. Through this demonstration project, the sponsors hope to encourage awareness and increased civic conversation about Bike Sharing for San Francisco as having the potential to build a greener city while encouraging healthy living.
 
SPONSORS:   City CarShare, SF Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), BIXI (of Montreal)
 
COST   Free

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in bikes | 2 Comments »

The Vélibs are Coming, The Vélibs are Coming to San Francisco!

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

Globetrotting San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced today in France that a Vélib’-style bike share program is coming to San Francisco. The plan is like ZipCar for bicycles - you could find a bike locked up in one of five areas around town, swipe your card, ride it to another bike lot, and then go about your bidness.

The French program has had its ups and downs. The little monsters of France (where “destroying property is a national pastime“) have found no end to what they can do to these built-to-last 50(!) pound bikes. In Paris, thousands of them have been lost and destroyed.

A satisfied Vélib’ customer in gay Paree. Cliquetez ici:

(¡Zoot alors! Their trash cans look just like ours!) via autsinevan

Who knows how this pilot program will work out here in San Francisco. Certainly, it will necessarily be different than what they have in Paris or Lyon. (The seven-mile trip between the CCSF Main Campus to the flat part of the Presidio – hoo boy, that’s a journey much longer than the typical Parisian jaunt, for example)

As they say in France, le bon Dieu est dans le detail.

 

  MAYOR GAVIN NEWSOM ANNOUNCES SAN FRANCISCO BIKE SHARING PILOT PROGRAM
PARIS, FRANCE – Mayor Gavin Newsom today used his visit to the successful
bike sharing network in Paris to announce that San Francisco will implement
a bike sharing pilot program in 2009. San Francisco’s bike sharing program
is intended to build on the recognition of San Francisco as a gold-level
bicycle friendly community by the League of American Bicyclists-the largest
United States city to receive such an honor.
“Bike sharing will help connect thousands of residents and commuters to
their workplaces and shopping destinations by providing bikes that they can
easily borrow,” said Mayor Newsom. “This bike sharing pilot project will
allow us to test and perfect the bikes and technology that will be used in
our citywide network.”
The pilot program will include 50 bikes located at five stations on
non-city property (as required by a Court injunction until environmental
review of the City’s Bicycle Plan is complete). Each station will have
either nine or 12 bikes and will provide approximately 50 percent more
bicycle parking slots to help ensure proper distribution between available
bikes and open, available drop-off spots. The stations will be in the
Financial District, Mission Bay, the Presidio, Civic Center and the City
College campus.
Bike sharing customers will sign-up through an online registration system
linked to the website of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
(SFMTA), which manages the City’s Bicycle Program.  Registration will
require a valid credit card to charge an annual user fee, hourly fees, and
to provide security for lost bikes (which will be the responsibility of the
user). A subscription will provide members access to all rental stations
and the use of a bike for a limited period of time per day.
“We are committed to the vision of increasing bicycling in San Francisco
through innovative programs like bike sharing,” said SFMTA Executive
Director/CEO Nathaniel P. Ford, Sr.
According to the 2007 Census update, 2.7 percent of San Franciscans commute
via bicycle compared to an average of 0.5 percent in the United States and
0.9 percent in California.  The SFMTA’s 2007-2008 Bicycle Count found a 25
percent increase in bicycling over the previous year, and a 2008 survey
showed that fully 6 percent of all trips in San Francisco are made by
bicycle.
The start-up costs for the pilot program are estimated to be between
$400,000 and $500,000, while the annual operating costs are projected to be
$450,000.  As provided for in the SFMTA’s Transit Shelter Advertising
Contract with Clear Channel, these costs are for Clear Channel to staff the
pilot program and have responsibility for installation and maintenance.
Today in Paris, Mayor Newsom received a briefing on the history,
organization and success of the “Velib” or bicycle share program in Paris,
and toured the repair, design and showroom facilities along with the
research and development facility. The “Velib” program was introduced by
Mayor Bertrand Delanoe as a way to reduce traffic and environmental
degradation in Paris by having a shared bicycle program encompass the
entire city. Today Paris has over 20,000 bicycles as part of the “Velib”
program and it has proven to be very popular and successful.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in bikes | 2 Comments »

Mayor Gavin Newsom Demands a Downtown Terminal for CA High Speed Rail

Monday, January 26th, 2009

You know what San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom wants? He wants the new California High Speed Rail System to make tracks all the way up to the new Transbay Terminal near Mission Street instead of having the rails end around the CalTrain Station on King Street. Says our Mayor, who is right now this moment learning all about high speed rail on the scene in Paris, France:

 “We’re not going to build a $2 billion bus station under my watch.”

Well, that says it all.

Click to expand:  

François Lacôte, SVP at French conglomerate (and BART train maker!) Alstom Transport, and our globetrotting First Couple, Gavin Newsom and Jennifer Siebel Newsom, today trainspotting in France. Via the Mayor’s Office of Communications.

And you know who would agree with Gavin? Dave Snyder, Transportation Policy Director at San Francisco Planning + Urban Research (SPUR). He thinks the voter-approved high-speed rail should “reach right into the heart of San Francisco, even if it costs more than… [nibbles right pinky ] one billion dollars.”

However, High Speed Rail Authority Chair Quentin Kopp might look at things a different way.

What will it appear like? Here’s an idea on the YouTube: San Francisco Transbay Transit Center Animation. Complete with intra- and inter-city rail, it’s just like a small version of Toyko Station. They want you to think of it as the Grand Central Station of the West(TM).

Will we get the necessary $300,000,000 ”train box” underneath the TT earlier rather than later? Will CalTrain finally have a chance to get up there to Mission as well? Stay tuned.

More deets after the jump

(more…)

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in transit | 5 Comments »

Paris Hilton Does San Francisco: Fairy Dust Now at Macy’s

Monday, November 10th, 2008

Everybody can use a little Fairy Dust, every now and then. And today you could have gotten your fix from Paris Hilton herself at the Union Square Macy’s. Check out what Reyhan Harmanci (Wesleyan ‘01) thought about the whole thing here. (“Sweet” AND “cloying” at the same time? Who’d have thought.)

Now aren’t you happy that American Airlines let Paris on the shuttle from LA to SFO with absolutely no ID this A.M.?  San Francisco wouldn’t have been able to bear another celebrity appearance cancelation today.  

The deets:

Paris Hilton Fairy Dust Collection: The enchanting new fragrance from Paris Hilton evokes the magical allure of a fairy tale with a sprinkle of Fairy Dust… every girl can believe her dreams will come true.

via Meeho14, click to expand

Bonus: Reviews of this new scent are in.

A bargain at twice the price.

And let’s all try to see Paris as Amber Sweet in the new movie Repo! The Genetic Opera - ’cause it’s “easily one of the worst movies of the year, if not all time.” Srsly, it looks awful.

Which notes can you detect? How did they fit all that smell into one little bottle?

Prisecco Accord, Pink Peony, Orange Blossom, Gardenia, Peach Nectar, Water Litly, Sueded Patchouli, Cashmere Musk, Vanilla Creme

Come back to SF soon, Paris!

Paris Hilton Personal Appearance
It’s your chance to meet Paris Hilton and check out her newest fragrance, Fairy Dust by Paris Hilton.

Be among the first 300 customers to purchase
an exclusive Paris Hilton fragrance collection, including her new fragrance Fairy Dust by Paris Hilton for $135 and you?ll receive an autograph from
Paris and a printed photo of yourself with her.*

You can reserve your purchase by calling 415-296-4231 or by visiting the Paris Hilton fragrance counter now through the day of the event. Pick it up at the event and meet the heiress herself.

Macy’s Union Square
November 10, Noon
Cosmetics, Level 1

*While time permits. No personal items, please. One autograph per customer. Fairy Dust by Paris Hilton purchases must be made through November 10 only at Macy’s Union Square. Our exclusive gift collections are available for the event while supplies last.

The $135 package includes: 1.7 oz Can Can Eau de Parfum Spray, 1.7 oz Fairy Dust Eau de Parfum Spray, 1.7 oz Paris Hilton Eau de Parfum Spray, Retro Bag, Socialite Bag, 1 oz Heiress Eau de Parfum Spray, 1 oz Paris Hilton Men Eau de Parfum Spray and a Tinkerbell plush toy.

Fairy Dust is a registered trademark of Fairy Dust, Ltd., Inc. The name ?Fairy Dust by Paris Hilton? is used with the permission of Fairy Dust Ltd., Inc.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in advertising | Comments Off

Check out the Presidio Main Post via Free Walking Tours this Summer

Monday, June 16th, 2008

Well, as promised, park officials over at the Presidio led a tour on Sunday describing new proposals for the area around the Main Post.

Yesterday, a good turnout of about 75 people went on a 1.5 hour tour of El Presidio and the Main Post. Tour participants inside the Presdio Officer’s Club, click to expand:

img_8590-copy.jpg 

It’s your Presdio, of course, so feel free to attend other walking tours scheduled for this summer:

Come see for yourself what proposals for the Presidio are all about. On this easy-to-moderate 90-minute guided walk, Presidio Trust staff will describe the birthplace of San Francisco at the heart of the Presidio – the historic Main Post – and discuss ideas for revitalizing it as the heart of an urban national park. Learn about proposals for a heritage center, an archaeology lab, public uses in the iconic brick barracks, a park lodge, reuse of the historic theatre, and a museum of contemporary art. Get answers to your questions and find out how you can make your opinions heard in this public process.

img_8606-copy.jpg

July 14th will be the next big event in the process of Bringing Back the Heart of the Presidio, as they say.

See you there!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

The SFChron’s John King Proposes Moving CAMP Museum, Louvre Pyramid

Friday, June 13th, 2008

Well, just kidding about the San Francisco Chronicle Urban Design Writer John King wanting to move La Pyramide du Louvre, but wouldn’t that big old museum in Paris be so much nicer if this modern glass pyramid were moved, say, just 150 yards to the south?

If you agree (or even if you don’t), head on over to Curbed SF and get your vote on about the siting of the soon-to-be fabulous Contemporary Art Museum of the Presidio.

350320449_42baf1ec20_o.jpg

Juxtaposition! Sacrebleu! Quelle horreur! Caio Basillio via Flickr 

And while you’re at it, you might as well mark your calenders for the walking tour of the Main Post of the Presidio scheduled for 2:00 PM on Sunday, June 15th: 

Come see for yourself what proposals for the Presidio are all about. On this easy-to-moderate 90-minute guided walk, Presidio Trust staff will describe the birthplace of San Francisco at the heart of the Presidio – the historic Main Post – and discuss ideas for revitalizing it as the heart of an urban national park. Learn about proposals for a heritage center, an archaeology lab, public uses in the iconic brick barracks, a park lodge, reuse of the historic theatre, and a museum of contemporary art. Get answers to your questions and find out how you can make your opinions heard in this public process. Layered clothing and comfortable shoes are recommended.

Of course, comfortable shoes are always recommended. See you there, mon frère!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »