There is no way a bike costs that much. Unless they hide gold under the seat, that is. They must be counting other expenses, like salaries or repairs and dividi

There is no way a bike costs that much. Unless they hide gold under the seat, that is. They must be counting other expenses, like salaries or repairs and dividing by the number of bikes. And before feeling too sorry for the poor company that provides the service, note that it thus obtained a monopoly on advertisement in Paris, which is a big deal. They regularly have columns in the newspapers complaining about vandalism, and how it's destroying its business, but they never complain that they got too much advertising space ;-) Also bike costs are shared with the city. I have not subscribed to the service, since I very often see bike stations which are: 1) either full of bikes (no way to dock yours) 2) or with no bikes ready to ride at all which means it lacks one of the fundamental aspect you would need from such a service: reliability. Technically, they are supposed to be moving bikes from stations which are full to stations which are empty but I have the feeling this is less likely to happen. That's why I prefer having my own bike, even if it may be a pain to find a good place to park it. For some reason, parisians don't feel the same way I do about reliability. They still use public transport and use the bike (when available) to go to/from the closest metro station.