Paris, September 10, 2009 - JCDecaux SA (Euronext Paris: DEC), the No.1 outdoor advertising company in Europe and in the Asia-Pacific region, No.2 worldwide in this industry, and No.1 worldwide in self-service bicycle hire, announces that its self-service bicycle hire schemes around the world have achieved 100 million individual rentals since the self-hire bicycles were first made available.
Since the launch of the self-service bicycle hire concept in Vienna (Austria) in 2003, followed by Cordoba and Gijon in Spain, and the successful development of the scheme in France with Vélo’v in Lyon in 2005, a growing number of towns and cities have benefitted from JCDecaux’s innovative service: Santander and Seville (Spain), Brussels (Belgium), Dublin (Ireland), Brisbane (Australia/launch in 2010), Paris and 30 municipalities in the Paris suburbs, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse, Rouen, Besançon, Mulhouse, Amiens, Luxembourg, Nantes and Nancy in addition to the inter-municipal structures of La Plaine and Cergy-Pontoise, representing a total of 60 towns and cities that have already generated 100 million individual rentals. Thanks to its easily accessible, exclusive electronic payment system, JCDecaux enables users to take out a subscription for one day, one week or one year, considerably simplifying the rental process for users.
The large-scale development of the Vélib’, Velov and Le vélo bicycle hire scheme not only provides a new product but also a new industrial service, stemming from innovative eco-friendly activities. The bicycle hire scheme is also the driving force behind a new sustainable mobility movement that is leading to a revolution in behaviour in urban environments. The scheme provides the essential link to create an intermodal transport system – long desired by public authorities while the eco-designed self-service bicycles that are installed, managed and maintained by JCDecaux allow public transport users to create new itineraries that are faster, more pleasant and more energy-efficient. The findings of various surveys prove that people are using self-service bicycles instead of their cars in a significant number of cases. The partnership between the local authorities, who are actively promoting this change, and JCDecaux, an innovative company, is leading to a new way of sharing public space which allows for individual choice while adopting a collective solution based on the pooling of their means of transport.
Jean-Charles Decaux, co-CEO of JCDecaux, made the following statement: “Thanks to this innovative solution, the result of wide-reaching deliberation about travelling and the quality of city life, our company – the No.1 specialist worldwide in self-service bicycle hire – has reinvented bicycle use in urban environments based on the principle that bicycles represent a fantastic complement to the use of public transport, speeding up the ongoing transformation towards a more sustainable society. By making it available to all, we are making this trans-generational scheme more universally accessible.”