Living

Nobody expected it to be this way—least of all Barcelona’s transport agency, which planned the service to complement the city’s bus, rail and metro network. Last year a survey claimed that Barcelona had only 50,000 existing cyclists. Having announced the scheme in mid-2006, the launch was delayed by several months, meaning that the first bikes arrived on the streets at the end of March. However, a combination of warm weather, cheap prices, a hefty discount offer on membership and the tendency of privately owned bicycles to get stolen, led to a surge in membership.

The first phase of the project—now complete—involved placing 1,500 bicycles at 100 points throughout the city centre. The bikes each have an electronic tag to prevent theft and can only be used by Bicing members, who register their credit card details and pay for the service through its website. Bicycles are collected from any one of the stations, used for up to two hours (the first half hour is free, and the next costs just 30 cents), and then returned to any station.

In its early stages, Bicing has occasionally seemed to be a victim of its own success. Tales of novice Bicingers going the wrong way up busy cycle paths or riding erratically through pedestrian zones were traded among the city’s cyclists; meanwhile, regular users griped about long delays in receiving their cards, a lack of bikes in many spots and the difficulty of finding a space at a Bicing station in others. Others were cynical about how long the shiny new bikes would last in a city as notorious for bicycle theft and vandalism as Barcelona. More seriously, in mid-June, Avui reported that the owners of several bike rental businesses were taking Bicing to court, accusing the Ajuntament of going into direct competition with them.

However, a couple of months down the line, the city’s bike rental industry appears relaxed about the existence of Bicing. Scott Haynes, the American owner of Fat Tire Bike Tours, told Metropolitan that his business had not been affected by the launch of Bicing. “We’ve had no problems so far, although I’m still kind of wary. If they make it easy for tourists to use then obviously that’ll be a problem. At the moment it can even work to our advantage—it plants a seed in tourists’ minds.”