The last 12 months have been a welter in which there has truly been little or no understanding of the issue of bike share.
Companies that promised bike share systems to cities for free suddenly disappeared from the market blaming the market for not being ready.
In this paradoxical situation, we have seen the newspapers speculate on the matter by indulging in the ancient practice of self-flagellation at which we Italians excel.
In order to understand more with respect to this situation, we wanted to hold an event to take stock of the situation, understand what had happened over the past 12 months, and understand what will happen in the future.
At the conference we called Bike Sharing City, mobility aldermen from Milan, Bologna, and Rimini spoke to present their city situations and very different realities.
Milan was the first Italian city to implement a large-scale bike sharing system in 2008 with Clear Channel (BikeMi) and launched an expression of interest in 2017 for free flow systems that led to the deployment of 12,000 bicycles throughout the city.
Bologna is the city that, in complete contrast to the others, decided to launch a public call for bike share in 2017 with particularly positive results today.
Rimini is a city capable of a tenfold increase in population from winter to summer and, as a result, needs special shrewdness in mobility management.
Among the companies that responded to our appeal are Clear Channel, Nextbike, Bicincittà, Bitride, and Moovas Tribe. At such a sensitive time, Asian operators decided not to participate or take sides.
For more, you can refer to this article on Bikeitalia.com.
Or you can view all the conference proceedings at this link: click
For us Bike Sharing City was an excellent opportunity to learn more about the bike sharing phenomenon and to foster greater awareness of a mobility tool that if properly governed can change the shape of our cities.