This is how it works in Helsinki too. Except half the time, one bike isn’t mounted properly and it thinks it’s not full. This happened enough times for me to ditch it and use my own bike, especially after the city didn’t address the feedback they had regarding the issue.

From personal experience the deal they make with the host city is usually a win-win (for the municipality and for the citizens). The experience is great, JCDecaux gets to use some billboard locations, and the citizens get a dirt cheap public bike scheme. Here in Sweden it costs something like 8 euros per year. Yes, per year.

Another interesting thing is that they have a pretty OK API https://developer.jcdecaux.com/#/opendata/vls?page=getstarte...

Oh, no argument there, I quite enjoyed using Villo, and it's really dirt cheap (not 8, but still just 30€).

That said, and while it's probably built on top of that API, Brussels has an even better API: it lets you submit a geographical area (which you can design manually on their site) and get info on all stations inside it in a single request/response, and you don't even need registration: https://opendata.bruxelles.be/explore/dataset/stations-villo...

the new system in Paris allows this now.