Lonely Planet™ · Thorn Tree Forum · 2020

What cities in Europe offer citybikes for rent?

Interest forums / Travel on a shoestring

Hi!
I live in Helsinki, and here we have a citybike system, where you can pick a bike on the street, drop a 2e coin into it, use it within the center and then get your 2e back when you return it.
Are there similar systems in other European cities? Maybe not free ones, but where you can just pick a bike from a stall on the street?
Thanks!

As you describe it, I know a similar system has been recently introduced in Paris and Barcelona.
I believe Copenhagen and Stockholm already had it for years.

Check Wikipedia

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Beside numerous cities in Scandinavia, in the rest of Europe there are Paris, Lyon, Aix-en-Provence, Mulhouse, Rouen, Besançon, Toulouse and Dijon in France. In Spain, there are Barcelona, Cordoba, Gijon and Seville. Brussels has a system. Luxembourg and Vienna have also just signed contracts for bike systems.

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@ gwovadis: Amsterdam doesn't have a system that allows you to pick up a bike at a random corner in the city as DDDeeva described.

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its NOwhere free, and the cities are about those listed now. Free: like in CPH: theyre all gone within 1 week. often you need a kind of new-style chipcard, which as such may only want a refundable deposit, but is often only for locals with permanent adress.

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I used the system in Helsinki (which is free), but it was difficult to find bikes for use. I found the racks were usually empty. I didn't see it in Stockholm, though. And I don't think Amsterdam has a community bike system.

Dave

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In Paris, we have 20,000 bikes, but it is still often difficult to find a bike, depending on the neighborhood, in spite of 20 trucks restocking bike stations 24/7.

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#1 Yes Barcelona has one of this systems, but for now only aimed to permanent residents. You have to get a "bicing" chipcard fom the City Council and pay an annual fee (24 €). It's planned to have a 1-week small fee (so it could be used for short stays) but it's not implemented yet. It' s functioning very well, there are many bikes in many pick/dropping points around the city. Bicing

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The ones in Seville also require a 150€ credit card security but even so are so few that they are gone in a flash ..

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I just saw this New York Times story about Paris' free bike program.

Dave

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Deutsche Bahn has installed such a system in München, Berlin, Frankfurt/Main, Köln, Stuttgart and Karlsruhe. It requires registration, then the bikes can be booked by mobile phone. Costs: 8 cent per minute, max. 15 € for a full day.

The system is named Call a bike

Karlsruhe is full of these bikes, they are everywhere.

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#9, the Paris system also requires a 150€ guarantee on the credit card (not debited if no reason to do so).

#10, maybe only 1% of American cards have a chip, so most Americans cannot yet use the system. The article talks about 'swiping' the card. This is not at all done with a chip card. You insert the card with the chip and enter your code. Swiping is for prehistoric cards and doesn't work with Vélib.

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#11 -- 8 cents per minute? That's outrageous! In most of the other cities, the first 30 minutes are free (and you can change bike every 29 minutes if you want).

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