How Bicing Barcelona city bikes works
A 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.