Shared city bikes received a warm welcome in a small town in Southwest Finland
City of Loimaa. Copyright: Heidi Caven
This summer 20 shared bicycles arrived in Loimaa, a small town of just over 15,000 inhabitants. The bikes will be deployed in the town in Southwest Finland for both residents and tourists to try out until the end of October. The city bike trial is a SCALE-UP project measure. SCALE-UP is an EU-funded action, which started in June 2021 with a total duration of four years, that aims to increase inclusive mobility chances in three urban nodes Madrid, Antwerp, and Turku.
In the context of this project, the Regional Council of Southwest Finland is developing the conditions for local rail transport in the region, and the city bike system is one way to facilitate rail-linked travel chains. The aim is to promote travel chains as a sustainable mobility option and gather information on the shared city bike system outside the Turku urban area. Loimaa was chosen to be the trial location because it is a transport hub along the railway connection between Tampere and Turku and their surrounding towns forming the second and third largest urban areas in Finland. The system has 5 digital bike stations in central Loimaa.
Feedback from users is sought for example on their opinions of the location of the bike stations and their user experiences during the rental and parking processes. The feedback will provide valuable information on development needs and the potential of the urban cycling system outside larger cities. The reviews from both residents and tourists during the first month of the trial have been positive. The users have also had the chance to make suggestions for improvements. The users have made suggestions for locations for the bike stations, such as Mellilä, a village 14 kilometers from Loimaa railway station, which is currently lacking public transport connections.
In the first four weeks of the trial, in July-August 2023, the bikes were rented a total of 50 times. There were more rentals in August than in July, which suggests that the popularity of the service may continue to increase towards autumn, after the summer vacations. More than half of the rentals were 15-minute rentals, i.e., quick transfers from one place to another. However, the second most popular rental period was 12 hours. This indicates that there may be different kinds of user profiles – for short-term rentals as part of multimodal trips and longer-term rentals for daily usage.
The article is available in Finnish language: