EAGER to reduce congestion, clean up the air, and encourage exercise, the City of Light recently launched Velib’ (which sounds like ‘free bike’ in French). The system offers Parisians open access to 20,000 bicycles located in corrals around the city’s 20 arrondissements. Today, the clunky grey bikes are as ubiquitous as New York’s yellow taxis and just like a taxi, you can pick up or drop off your ride as needed.

Such urban progress rides on past failures: in 1967, a similar social experiment in Amsterdam ended badly when the good public simply stole the city’s white bikes and painted them an indiscernible brown. To counter theft, riders in Paris make an automatic deposit of 150 Euro with a bankcard before the bike is released to them. Your first 30 minutes is free, then you’re charged 1 Euro per additional half hour.That’s cheaper than the metro and a far more invigorating way to travel around the city, though the system is not without some quirks. After three attempts to extract a bike for the day, I gave up (the machines favour European banks), but I spotted plenty of other tourists pedalling up and down the boulevards.

Alors, France is never without its malcontents. An activist group on wheels, Vélorution seeks a car-free Paris but object to Velib’s private partnerships and commercial methods. To help publicise and increase usage of the free bikes, the mayor of Paris has just hired French advertising monolith JC Decaux. On September 25, the spandex-clad revolutionaries of Vélorution will ride through the streets and ring their bells to protest the contract for "energy wastage, visual pollution, and the increase in advertising."