Bike rental scheme expands despite staggering vandalism rates

The [Paris] vélib project came as a gift not just to the Parisian bourgeois-bohème and the free-riding foreigner, but to another well-represented demographic: those with a penchant for smashing bikes against walls, slashing their tyres, chipping lumps out of their frames and tossing the sorry heaps into the Seine. The operators have spent the past 2½ years puzzling over the problem.