Bicing is Bicycle Borrowing in Barcelona
Bicing city bikes Barcelona
Borrowing Bicing bike in Barcelona. Bicycles are a large and important part of Barcelona's public transport system. The Barcelona city council launched this innovative bicycle borrowing scheme, called “El Bicing” (pronounced "bee-sing,") in 2007. Barcelona's Bicing city bike system is mostly used by residents of Barcelona because it is intended as a public transport service for short bicycle journeys of maximum 30 minutes in duration. For this reason it is not really suitable as a sightseeing bicycle option and so for tourists visiting Barcelona, we recommend renting bikes at the many tourist bike rental companies who rent bikes at affordable hourly rates.
Website Barcelona Bicing
MAP Barcelona bicing pick-up & drop-off points
Tourist bike rentals Barcelona
Tourist bike tours Barcelona
You can find Bicing station locations on the Barcelona online city map website on web address www.bcn.cat/guia. To show Bicing stations on the map, choose transport options in the left menu of the map. Then the Bicing stations, and other Barcelona public transport services like metro stations, will be shown on the map.
Bicing is very popular with Barcelona residents with over 120,000 subscribers signed up. When Bicing in Barcelona launched in 2007 there were just 750 "bicing" bikes available at 50 pick-up/drop off points in the city located mostly near Metro stations and municipal parking places. In 2012 there were 420 bicing stations and 6,000 Bicing bikes available and in 2012 around 40.000 daily journeys were made which comes to around eleven million journeys a year.
The objective of Bicing was and is to encourage Barcelona residents to make short trips by bicycle to help reduce the number of cars circulating in Barcelona, so many of the Bicing stations are by metro stations, parks and car parks.
Bicing is financed both by users and income from the implementation of green-area parking regulations, which was also designed to encourage cleaner transport in Barcelona.
Prices Barcelona city bikes
Annual subscription price €47.15
Annual subscription for Bicing membership with unlimited bicing trips of 30 minutes each free.
After first 30 minutes 4 additional periods of 30 minutes are €0.74 each
After 2 hours each additional hour costs € 4.49
Bicing prices includes a third party insurance if bicing users cause damage to others.
See all Bicing prices on the Bicing website
How Bicing Barcelona city bikes works
Bicing barcelona - bike borrowingA paid up subscriber of the bicing system gets a personal bicing card in the post or at the bicing office. The Bicing card is used to release and deliver bicing bikes from the automatic bicing stands around Barcelona. When a bicing bike is released, the bicing user then has 30 minutes free to get to their destination and drop off the bike at another bicing pick up/drop off location.
The first half hour of bicing is free and then it costs € 0.71 for each additional 30 minute period until you reach the maximum allowed time of 2 hours in total. After that there is a penalty charge of € 4.30 an hour for failing to drop off the bicing bike. After three penalty charges your bicing account will be closed. This user revenue generates around 25% of the total cost of the Barcelona bicing system.
Despite occasional frustration, when bicing racks might be full or when bikes are out of order, Bicing is undeniably a huge success and Barcelona is fast climbing up the world list of top bicycle friendly cities.
Bicycling is clean, healthy and quiet and Bicing has introduced the use of a bike as a daily transport system to many residents of Barcelona. A big and obvious benefit of using the Bicing system rather than owning your own bicycle, is that Bicing users have access to hundreds of bikes all over Barcelona, instead of owning one bike, which might have been stolen.
Bicing operation times
Bicing barcelona - city bikes Sunday to Thursdays:
Bicing stands open all day from except from midnight to 05.00.
During the night you can only drop-off bicing bikes, not pick them up.
Friday and Saturday:
Bicing stands open all hours of day for both pìck-up and drop-off of bikes.
On certain days during special events like big festivals the Bicing is open all night.
Bicing bike specificatons
The bicing bike of Barcelona have 3 gears, an adjustable saddle and lights that switch on automatically at dusk. The operator of El Bicing in Barcelona is Clearchannel, who also manage successful Smartbike systems in other European cities like Oslo, Stockholm and Lyon.
The Bicing cards are on sale on the Internet and over the counter at the Barcelona Bicing office. The bicing website (in Spanish and Catalan only) has information about current and future Bicing locations and a real time map showing how many bicing bikes and parking places are available at each location.
For 2015 new electric Bicing bikes are being tested. The first test will be with 150 electric bicing bikes which will be available to 1500 selected test users and will be stored in underground bicing stations.