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Car Sharing / Cars / Rental Cars / Autolib / Paris Travel / Green Travel / Velib / → All Tags

Autolib. It's Like Paris' Velib Bike Sharing, Just with Cars.

Back in October we heard that bike-sharing was turning into car-sharing thanks to the Velib spin-off—Autolib. Initially the rental cars were part of a test run, but the program has been pretty popular and now it’s time to go all-in.

The plan is to eventually add more than 3,000 emission-free cars to the streets of Paris, but for now new cars will be added each and every week. The system works just like the bikes—with a slight increase in cost—and you can pick your car up in one location and drop it off in another. The cars are all battery powered, but the Bluecar electric vehicles should be able to spin around for at least 150 miles before requiring another fill up of electricity.

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Bike Sharing / Biking / Velib / Travel Websites / Bicycling / → All Tags

RentaBikeNow Makes Two Wheels Almost As Easy To Borrow As Four

Our number one travel biking request here at Jaunted is for cheap, Velib-style bike-sharing in every city on earth, but until that happens, we’ll settle for a national bike rental service that makes hopping on two wheels as easy as renting a car.

On the path to this is RentaBikeNow.com, a web-based company that partners with bike shops to provide rentals in 157 different cities across the U.S. and Canada. The site launched a few months back and got a boost recently when Lance Armstrong’s coach, Chris Carmichael, shouted them out on twitter.

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Calorie-Neutral Travel / Food Travel / Travel Media / Velib / Chocolate / Biking / → All Tags

Chocolate Paris Bike Tour

The poor New York Times travel section: In an age where practically every travel story is about how to save money and do things the cheapskate way, the paper has to struggle to find new ways to highlight its indulgent destinations of choice.

The Times sometimes catches heat for some of it's "budget" suggestions, but one recent idea was quite clever: A tour of Paris' high-end chocolatiers, via the just-about-free Velib bike sharing system.

While the Times reporter hits an impressive number of chocolate shops in a short period of time--and probably burns off a decent percentage of the calories gained--we're a little skeptical of any itinerary that involves chocolate, biking, chocolate, biking and more chocolate. While it's definitely a wallet-friendly take on high-end sweets, it also sounds like a recipe for a tres upset stomach.

Related Stories:
· Le Tour du Chocolat [NYT]
· Bon Anniversaire, Velib! [Jaunted]
· Refereeing the Travel Media: Arthur Frommer Escalating His Attacks on the NYT [Jaunted]

[Photo: Rui Ornelas]