End of the road for Copenhagen City Bikes

A proposal made by Morten Kabell, a city council member for the Red-Green Alliance a few years ago promised to change the face of the city’s bike sharing system. To keep pace with advancing technology and become more modern, the old bikes were meant to be replaced with newer designs.

In 2009, a competition was even announced and winners chosen. This competition had invited proposals for the design of new bikes, which would hit the streets at the latest by 2013.

With everything ready at hand, the modern dreams of these city bikes just seemed a step away from reality. But now in 2012, the renowned bike sharing facility of Copenhagen might have to be put on hold for a while due to budget considerations.

City finances and bicycle project conflict

When the Copenhagen local politicians entered into budget settlement for 2013, they decided that there was not enough money to fund this bicycle project.

Along with the non implementation of the newer designs, the older bicycles will also be removed.

However, the Technical and Environmental Mayor of Copenhagen, Ayfer Baykal is still open to renewing this bicycle hiring scheme at a later date. The contract with the company who manages the hiring schemes comes to an end in later October, this year. For now, this seems like the end of the bike sharing system.

Copenhagen founded ‘bike sharing’ scheme

For international students in Denmark, biking is one of the first customs that tends to be picked up quickly. It is a quick learning process that a Dane and her/his bike can never be separated for too long.

This delightfully environment friendly tradition of Denmark was further developed when the Copenhagen municipality started the Bike sharing system with city bikes in 1995.

For 20 DKK you could rent a good bike and meander through the streets of Copenhagen. In fact, Copenhagen was the first city to implement such a concept 15 years ago. Since then, it has been implemented in a number of major cities world wide. More than 15 years since their birth, it is now, apparently, time for the city bikes to take a break.

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