Since last October 11, when Prague City launched a free bike-sharing pilot project in cooperation with Rekola and Nextbike, more than 13,000 citizens have activated this option on Lítačka and more than half are active users.
“People most often rent bicycles during peak hours, around 7 am in the morning and between 2 pm and 5 pm in the afternoon. Praguers also rent bikes at night, when we register an average of about 40 loans a day,” said Drápal.
“After three months, despite the winter period, we can confirm that the combination of shared bicycles and public transport works. Therefore, we decided to permanently integrate it into the PID system,” said Adam Scheinherr, Deputy Mayor and Transport Councilor (Praha Sobě).
Prague residents have the opportunity to use a shared bike (by Rekola and Nextbike) for free for 15 minutes and up to 4 times a day. Residents must, however, be owners of valid electronic subscription tickets in order to use the service.
To rent a bike, one must first download the mobile application of the shared bike service provider. Then, they must link it to their regional transport system (Lítačka) account.
Once this is done successfully, the bike-sharing system will allow the individual to use the service free of charge for 15 minutes. This can be done up to 4 times a day.
The Director of Prague Integrated Transport Petr Tomčík commented: “By combining these two sustainable modes of transport in Prague, we want to motivate people to use public transport even more and offer them an even more comfortable and faster way of travel.”
Both Rekola and Nextbike also expressed their delight with the new project, noting that bike-sharing should not be viewed as a competitor to public transport. Tomáš Karpov from Nextbike went further, stressing that smart cities use bike-sharing to make transport more efficient.
Several cities across Europe have successfully integrated (shared) bikes, both e-bikes and conventional ones, into the offer of transport services.
