Sustainable Urban Mobility
Bikesharing is very popular in Ostrava. In the first three months of this year, people rented the bikes of Nextbike, the service provider, nearly 156,000 times, i.e. approximately 1,620 times per day. Currently 26,939 users are registered with the service.
The record day was Thursday 18 July during the music festival Colours of Ostrava. People rented 3,336 bikes and also the number of registered users increased up to four times to 200 per day (the usual daily average is 50). In general, most rentals are on Fridays and fewest on Sundays.
The most popular rental point in the city centre has traditionally been Nová Karolina, followed by Masaryk Square and Maryčka in Lower Vítkovice (DOV).
Overall, the ten most used rental points are in Poruba (8x), followed by Moravská Ostrava a Přívoz (2x); in terms of rental percentage, Moravská Ostrava a Přívoz and Poruba account for 37%. Shared bikes are also popular in Ostrava-Jih (15%). Of the total amount of rentals, 87% are free because they are shorter than 15 minutes.
“In June, we launched an awareness-raising campaign that focuses primarily on the younger generation of bikesharing users, educating them on compliance with the basic rules. The “Watch out” campaign is based on the “ten commandments” of shared bike rides. It is available in the application, on racks and on wheels. I believe that the behaviour of users of shared bikes will gradually improve”, added Deputy Mayor Kateřina Šebestová.
Bikesharing greatly complements the public transport system and speeds up the movement through the city with a clean environmental footprint. It is used by both locals and students, who use it to get to work or school more quickly, as well as tourists visiting landmarks and using bikes for a longer time. One only needs the mobile app and his own legs to travel.
The bikesharing public contract was awarded this year to Nextbike with its blue bikes, currently offering 600 bikes in 212 racks in Ostrava. Bikesharing is one of the fajnOVA strategic plan projects.