Paris-based public bike sharing system, Vélib’, under its new operator, The Smovengo Group (Smovengo) faced several challenges. As part of the deal, Smovengo had to provide 1,400 docking stations and 20,000 operational bicycles by March 2018 in return for revenues from Vélib’s ridership. While Smovengo aimed to make Vélib’ a successful bike sharing program, it faced several challenges from declining ridership to bikes being stolen, and users complaining about empty stations and lack of usable bikes due to technical failures, vandalism, and delays in repair and maintenance. To tackle the issue of repairing damaged bikes and putting them into operation, Smovengo was planning to increase its existing maintenance capacity to 850 bikes per day and to offer 19,000 bikes by the end of July 2019.
