Bicing, Barcelona's public rental service, is celebrating its first anniversary. Despite a number of shortcomings and critics, the Catalan capital has almost fully implemented the system with 286 stations and 4,000 bicycles for 130,000 registered users. The plans aren't stopping here. The city will have 400 stations and 6,000 bicycles by the end of August once the expansion plan for the non-center districts is completed. Due to Barcelona's relatively small size (99 km²), neighbor municipalities are considering expanding the service to make it metropolitan.

Nevertheless, and despite the global satisfaction of the service, the system has problems. First of all, the chosen bike model wasn't sturdy enough. Newer bikes have better brakes and light system, as well as improved seats and wheels. Stations have also been plagued with problems, since the locking system has been found to be troublesome. There are also complaints about the system that redistributes the bikes among the stations, which is far from being perfect, despite having more than 10 vehicles and 120 workers. Finally, such an increase in the use of bicycles has proved that the bike lane network to be insufficient, and the City Hall is rushing to get more lanes built.

What is still good is the price: For 24 EUR/year you can use the bikes for 30 minutes any time you need to (paying 0.50 EUR additional for each half an hour in a particular stretch). Plans to create weekly passes for tourists have been postponed so far, so if you plan to visit around, borrow a friend's pass. Per molts anys! (Happy birthday).

[Source: El Periodico]

We have spoken about the public bike rental services offered in several European cities but as it seems that people love comparisons (better with neighbors), the Catalan newspaper El Periódico has written an article comparing two of these European projects (there are others in Vienna and Paris in a few days) involving this new means of public transport. To summarize how this works: You get a card, pay a certain fee and then you have at your disposal a lot of bicycles in certain spots in your city to get around and return at another spot near your destination.

First of all, El Periódico criticises the lower number of bikes available in Barcelona compared to Lyon. Whereas the Catalan city is struggling to finalise the deployment of 3,000 bikes and 200 stations, Lyon has 4,000 bikes and 300 stations. Barcelona's population is also almost four times the size of Lyon (1.6 million vs. 417,000). Paris' plans are to have 20,000 bikes at 1,450 stations for a 2.1 million population.

There is also a detailed comparison between the two bike models. In this aspect, the model in Barcelona is less sophisticated, but it turns out to be 8 kg lighter than Lyon's (16.8 kg compared to 25.2). The anchoring system for the used bikes is also better in Lyon, and the service is available 24 hours a day, compared to the more uncomfortable system and less availability in Barcelona (the same as the subway system).

Note that both systems are managed by advertising companies. Barcelona's by Clear Channel (a US company) and Lyon's by JCDecaux (French).

Related

• Paris launching citywide bike rentals (and they're cheap!)
• Bicing makes biking popular in Barcelona with 30,000 users in 2 months

[Source: El Periódico (link is in Spanish)]

Following in the footsteps of cities like Lyon and Paris in France, Vienna in Austria and others, Barcelona in Spain has started offering bicycles (the human powered kind... with pedals) to people who need to get around the city. Again, just like in Lyon and Paris, the system has been extremely popular. How popular, you ask? How about 30,000 users so far in the first two months? To be able to use one of the bikes, a user must first register an account online. The first 30 minutes of bike use is free, and the bike must be brought back after 2 hours. Of course, you can retake a bike back out, but you first must re-swipe your membership card.

The purpose of the bikes, and how they are mostly used, is for residents of the city to get around. Tourists do not make up a large portion of the users, from what I understand. The success of these systems show that people really are willing to use the bikes, so long as they are available. With the high cost of gas, I can see fair climate urban areas in the United States being able to follow a similar system. When I visited Salt Lake city a few years back, for example, these bikes would have been the absolute perfect way to get around the city, and would probably work out a good 9 months out of the year. I can imagine them working in Chicago and Seattle as well. These are all cities that I have visited before. They all have a bustling downtown area and the bikes could be used for more than half the year. Obviously, local geography and weather patterns would need to be considered, but I really like the idea.

[Source: Treehugger]