Bike-sharing Designed to Fit More than the Average José

Gandia, Spain is the one of the first cities to adapt its bike-sharing service, labici, for persons with disabilities. With 500 bikes at 40 stations, the municipality decided to introduce bicycles for those with disabilities as a trial program. According to laprovincias, the Councillor for Traffic and Mobility for the City of Gandia, Vicent Mascarell, is proud of his city's "commitment to equality" to persons with disabilities." A successful experiment here could lead to more bike-sharing services following Gandia's lead.

In the bike-sharing world as May winds down, Hawaii B-cycle (Kailua, USA), Boulder B-cycle (Boulder, USA) and StadtRad Berlin (Berlin, Germany) started today. Capital bIXI (Ottawa, Canada) started on Wednesday and Madison B-cycle (Madison, USA) starts on Sunday. At this rate of new service launches, The Bike-sharing World Map will soon be rolling with more bike icons than blank space!

Happy Bike to Work Day for readers in the United States!

[Check out Russell Meddin's guest article this month at Renault's Sustainable Mobility website. - Paul]

image: laprovincias.es

Russell Meddin bikesharephiladelphia.org

Onroll Rolls Across Spain

A bike-sharing system that has yet to receive attention on The Bike-sharing Blog, until now, is called Onroll from the Spanish company domoblue. Onroll is one of the few systems out there where rental and return is conducted by text message (SMS). To join, one must register their mobile phone number to receive a customer code. Checking out a bike is as easy as sending a text message with the following information:

"Take b[bike number] l[lock number] [customer code]"
For example, "Take b20 l88 se1234".

Returning a bike is just as easy with replacing "Take" with "Return".

Each bike and lock are uniquely numbered.



Onroll is currently in or under construction in 28 cities(!) in Spain. There are so many cities and towns already using Onroll, you could say the system is "ubikequitous". The services are generally small with up to 106 bikes and 11 stations. Their services are being offered in cities such as Segovia, where electric-assist (pedalec) cycles are mixed into the offering.


image credits: El Blog Personal de Mike Chapel, AmigosDelCiclismo