by Bryan Pirolli

The Tour de France rolled down the Champs Elysées in August, but bicycle fever has hardly calmed in Paris. With the success of the year-old Vélib' public bicycle system, the City of Lights is looking beyond its periphery and toward the suburbs.

Vélib' allows anyone with a Carte Bleue or American Express credit card to rent bicycles from more than 1,400 stations in the city's 20 arrondissements. But by the end of the year, the city hopes to have 300 new stations with nearly 7,500 new bicycles in place in the closest suburbs. The expansion shows a major push for green transportation that is catching on with Parisians and tourists alike. Take a ride along the Seine and you'll wonder why you'd ever pay 15 euros for a smoggy boat cruise. As for the "banlieues," as the Parisian suburbs are called, they're probably better known for the riots and car burnings of 2005, but fortunately Vélib' bicycles are neither extremely flammable nor conducive to fire bombings. Whew.

And lucky for those stateside, Vélib's success in Paris--along with similar systems in Oslo, Lyon, Cologne, Amsterdam, and other European cities--is grabbing the attention of governments across the pond. A green-minded public bicycle service just launched in Washington, D.C., under the name SmartBike DC. Even Chicago and New York are considering a public bike system in the near future. (As if dodging taxis on foot wasn't scary enough.)

Further reading:
* Montreal's getting hip to the public bike scene, too--and it needs a name