Since the introduction of the first bike sharing systems in the 60. the financing and implementations models have evolved.
The idea of first bike sharing systems in the 60. was that the city would buy bikes and leave them on the street for shared use of all the citizens. In Amsterdam, to encourage the council to implement this idea activists from the radical group Provo left a couple dozen white bikes on the streets and let everybody use them. Even though the initiative was a failure (bikes were either stolen or confiscated by the police) it is always mentioned as the first bike sharing initiative in the world. In the following years the bike sharing systems that were introduced were exclusively financed and maintained by cities.
The breakthrough came when Clear Channel came up with the idea of introducing a bike sharing system in Rennes called Vélo à la Carte that would be financed with revenues from the street furniture contract. Thanks to this idea Clear Channel won the contract for street furniture in Rennes over JCDecaux.
This started the advertisement war between the companies. JCDecaux filed a lawsuit against Clear Channel about the public bikes. Clear Channel answered with suing JCDecaux for unfair competition.
The next battle of the war took place in 2007 in Paris during the tender for street furniture advertising. First the tender was won by Clear Channel with an offer of 14.000 bikes, but JCDecaux was able to have the contract broken for a legal flaw. In the end it was the French advertising giant who won the tender with an offer 20.000 bikes. And so the Velib’ was born.
The street furniture business model looks as follows:
