Looks like the city of Lyon has implemented a free (to the city) very cheap (to the user) scheme of bicycle shareing. Basically they've put about 2000 bikes in around the city and by using your credit card, you can "check out" a bike. It's free for the first 1/2 hour then less than 1 euro per hour after that. Pretty cool for an urban area and maybe the fact that you have to check the bike out on a credit card will cut down on the plagues of theft from other "free" bike schemes such as the orange bike disaster in Amsterdam.

Anyways, this comes via Velorution (2000 free bicycles for Lyon citizens) and the full story appeared in Le Monde but of course they have annoying subscriber access and bugmenot doesn't seem to work. Someone has reproduced the original article with some more of the background politics behind it here at Tous à vélo!. I can't read French very well, so it will probably take me a week to understand 30% of it.