BIKES TO THE FULL
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Story by
Redacció Barcelona
The amazing figures for Bicing show more than 130,000 subscribers, 300 new users every day, an average of 30,000 cyclists a day and more than 18 million kilometres done. The shared bike network set up by the Barcelona City Council just a year ago is similar to the ones in Lyon, Copenhagen, Brussels and Paris.
At the moment, the people of Barcelona can enjoy nearly 130 kilometres of bike lane all around the city thanks to 300 stations and more than 4,000 public bicycles offered by the network. All this for 24 Euros a year.
Slowly, the white and red bicycle has made its way to the traditional symbols of the public transport in Barcelona such as the yellow taxis (like in New York), the underground and the public buses.
This great success of a service used by people of any age has also caused some trouble: no bikes when you want to take one, no places to leave the bicycles back in the stations, periodical saturation of the computer system in the stations, a clash between cyclists and pedestrians, etc…
In any case, if we add the over 50,000 cyclists that go around the streets of Barcelona every year to the users of Bicing, the city is approaching the standards of Dutch cities, which are a referent in the use of bikes.
Taking into account that a research done by the World Health Organisation in 2005 shows that Barcelona is the third European city with the highest levels of atmosphere pollution, Bicing is not just desirable but also necessary.