A new city bike service arrives on the streets in Helsinki.
HELSINKI—A total of 400 new city bikes are going to appear on the streets across Helsinki center during the last week of July.
The bikes are operated by a company called Juro Sharing Infra Oy and in comparison with the city bikes operated by the City of Helsinki, they are white and the locks on the bikes are powered by a solar panel—thus no designated station is necessary. The bikes can be left anywhere.
A mobile application will guide the user to the nearest city bike. The bikes will be scattered around the city in groups of a few dozens.
The application works with a credit card. For €1.50 the user can pedal the bike for 30 minutes, which is the minimum riding time. There’s no upper limit.
The service is financed partly by offering advertising space on the frames of the bikes in cooperation with Mediamix, a company specialized in outdoor advertising.
The new bikes are likely to be in operation until October or November. In the future, they could, according to Mediamix CEO Harri Karlsson, be operated in the winter as well.
“Our idea is that during season 2021 there would be 1,000 bikes in Helsinki,” Karlsson said in an interview with M&M magazine.
