This summer brings a new regional bike-sharing system, Metroradruhr, to ten industrial Ruhr valley cities. Starting on June 18th in Dortmund, Germany the system has now reached five of the cities. Bikes are now or soon will be available in Bochum, Bottrop, Dortmund, Duisburg (site of this week's horrific music festival stampede), Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Hamm, Herne, Mülheim an der Ruhr and Oberhausen. This is not just a series of suburban satellite additions to a larger city system, but a single system connecting nearby cities together. The most similar operation is Italy's Bicincittà, but the cities and stations of Metroradruhr are close enough together to allow bikes to move between cities.
Metroraruhr operates using the neXt bike telephone rental system. As with neXt bike, Metroraruhr has the convenience of reserving bikes for large groups in advance. Registration is required to use the system, but there are no subscriptions. The price is €1 per hour ($1.30 US) for any bike or according to which bike is chosen, starting from €5 per 24 hours ($6.50 US).
Linking an area together with a single bike-sharing system has incredible convenience for the users and strengthens a region's public transit options.
As we all know, Bike-sharing in Germany is really Rad-verleihsystem!
1 comment:
This is such an excellent idea.
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