is a large-scale public bicycle sharing system in Paris, France. Launched on 15 July 2007, the system encompassed around 14,500 bicycles and 1,400 bicycle stations, located across Paris and in some surrounding municipalities, with an average daily ridership of 85,811 in 2011. The name Vélib' is a portmanteau of the French words vélo ("bicycle") and liberté ("freedom"). Vélib' was operated originally as a concession by the French advertising corporation JCDecaux. , Vélib' was the world's 12th-largest bikesharing program by the number of bicycles in circulation; the rest of the top 18 are in Chinese cities. , Velib' had the highest market penetration with 1 bike per 97 inhabitants, followed by Vélo'v in Lyon with 1 bike per 121 residents, and Hangzhou in China with 1 per 145. Since December 2011, Vélib' had been complemented by Autolib', an electric car sharing scheme operating on similar principles. As of 2018, Velib' has been rebranded as Vélib' Métropole, and is now operated by Smovengo. History The initiative was proposed by Paris mayor and French Socialist Party member Bertrand Delanoë. The system was launched on 15 July 2007 following Lyon's success of its contactless system Vélo'v in May 2005, the pioneering scheme in June 1998 of LE vélo STAR in Rennes, the first free public network (25 stations) with electronic identification of the bikes but which used magnetic cards or earlier the simple bicycle-sharing system of La Rochelle in 1974. Velib' initially introduced to the city 7,000 bicycles, distributed among 750 automated rental stations, with fifteen or more bicycle parking slots each. The following year the initiative was enlarged to some 16,000 bicycles and 1,200 rental stations, with roughly one station every throughout the city centre. making Vélib' the third-most-extensive system of its kind in the world in 2013, surpassed in station numbers only by systems in Hangzhou and Wuhan in China. During its first year in operation, Vélib' reported 20 million trips made, and at its sixth anniversary, a total of 173 million journeys were reported. As of 1 January 2018, Velib' has been rebranded as Vélib' Métropole. It is now operated by Smovengo. The service is operating in Paris and 64 surrounding cities. After many technical issues at relaunch, the City of Paris set an ultimatum to resolve service problems by September 2018 which seemed to work as the system is slowly recovering in January 2019. Velib' now also offers electric bicycles,