Stations under construction and months without Vélib’. Ile-de-France users still remember these moments of abandonment in 2018 when Smovengo took over from the historic operator JCDecaux, and had to completely replace its Vélib’ fleet and transform the docking stations. This period will also weigh heavily on the deficit at the end of the contract with the current operator Smovengo, in 2032.
It is estimated at 113 million euros but the service is now “profitable” and its sustainability “is not at stake”, according to the competent joint union, which is based on an audit presented on Tuesday. Bikes out of service or in poor condition, empty or on the contrary full stations: faced with the “severe observation” of the listeners, the union recalls the priority set for Smovengo of “improving regulation”.
Thank you JCDecaux!
“This economic imbalance” is “attributable in large part to the years 2018-2021 which present a cumulative deficit for the company of nearly 209 million euros”, affirms the Syndicat Autolib’ Vélib’ Métropole (SAVM) in a press release issued at the end of the trade union committee bringing together the sixty or so user municipalities. This deficit “results mainly from the difficulties encountered by the provider company to organize itself and ensure the establishment of stations and bicycles” at the time and “is therefore its responsibility”, writes the SAVM.
In 2018, the handover between the historic operator JCDecaux and Smovengo, a consortium of four companies (Fifteen, Indigo, Mobivia, Moventia), turned into a fiasco due to the repair of the stations to accommodate the new model of bicycle, which had made the service inaccessible for many months.
A now “profitable” service
Since then, the quality of service has always been “insufficient with regard to the contractual objectives”, with a number of bicycles “16% lower” than these objectives at the start of 2022, according to the auditors quoted by the SAVM. But the service is now “profitable” and its sustainability “is not at stake”, underlines the latter, for which “revenues and expenses will be balanced until the end of the market, generating a profit for the provider company Smovengo of 95 million euros over the period 2022-2032”.
This “improvement” does not take into account the increase in the fixed price including electric bicycles and the additional contribution of the communities, for a total of 7 million, which contributes to the “recovery” of Vélib ‘, underlined to AFP Sylvain Raifaud, the president of the SAVM.
The arrival of 3,000 additional bicycles, promised by Smovengo for the Olympic Games, and the opening of 100 new stations in the inner suburbs, financed by the Metropolis, also contribute to “developing the service”, currently used by “almost 100,000 users per day, ”recalls the elected ecologist.