Sawt Falasteen - Joy riders give Paris bike share system a flat

"At the moment, we're missing 3,000 bikes" out of the fleet of some 20,000 regular and electric bicycles, said Sylvain Raifaud, head of the Agemob company that currently operates the Velib system.

While vandalism has always been a problem, Raifaud said that for the past month the number of bikes disappearing had nearly tripled to 640 per week.

Agemob believes vandals have learned how to pry the bikes free from stands. They then joy ride them until an automatic lock is triggered after 24 hours, at which point they abandon them.

The problem: "We don't know where the bikes are, they don't have GPS chips," Raifaud told AFP.

He appealed for local authorities to help it find the bikes.

The lack of such a large number of bikes leaves Velib struggling to satisfy users.

"The remaining bikes are being used much more and are more worn out," said Raifaud. That also meant the batteries of electric bikes did not have enough time to recharge.

"This has resulted in entire stations with unusable bikes" leaving "users very frustrated", he added.

Launched in 2007, Velib bikes were used for 49.3 million trips last year. Raifaud said ridership had been increasing, with May's figures up by 16 percent over last year.

X.AbuJaber--SF-PST