Our readers surely know about the public bike rental services that are currently being installed around Europe: First city was Lyon, then Vienna (now canceled suspended for winter), Barcelona, Seville and Paris. Rome, which is a city with serious transit problems, has decided to give it a try as well. Other cities such as Madrid and San Francisco have sent representatives to Barcelona and Paris to check the possibility of installing similar systems.

Rome's city hall has hired a Spanish company called Cemusa, which is specialized in urban advertising (billboards, bus stops...), to provide this service. Clear Channel provides Barcelona's service and JCDecaux is doing the same in France.

The initial plans are a modest deployment of 250 bicycles in 22 stations, which will be placed in Rome's historical center, starting January 2008. Should this pilot program work, Rome's City Hall will deploy more than 20,000 vehicles around the entire city.

[Source: Europa Press via Econoticias]

[Edited: Thanks to Robert for the correction]

Due to the success of the Bicing service in Barcelona and similar services in Lyon and Paris, two more cities have decided to support public bike rental services, Sevilla and Córdoba, in the region of Andalusia (Spain).

The plans for Córdoba are very modest, due to the relative small size of the city: 35 bikes in 4 stations, linking the historic center with spots such as the City Hall and the High Speed Train (AVE) station. The service, called Ciclocity, is free for everybody but requires registering personally at the council offices.

Sevilla has more ambitious plans. First of all, the model will be copied from Lyon's bike, (I'm sure they took note of the strong criticisms that the Barcelona model has) with a beefed up service, named Sevici, with 2,500 bikes available and 250 parking stations distributed in all city districts, managed by JCDecaux. The cost is only 10 EUR/year or 5 EUR/week, with the 30 first minutes of rental for free (1/2 EUR for each additional half-hour). Currently, only two stations are working for free demonstrations in the city center but the complete deployment is expected for mid-2008.

I just couldn't resist mentally comparing this to the Cadillac Seville models and the Chrysler Cordoba...

Related:

• Do you want to try an electric car while on vacation? Go to La Rochelle (France)
• Which public bike rental service is better: Lyon or Barcelona?
• Paris launching citywide bike rentals (and they're cheap!)

[Source: Sevilla and Córdoba City Halls]