Bike sharing. Three new BikeMi virtual stations opened
From today, signage-only stations near three high schools
Milan, 1 October 2021 - Milanese sharing mobility is enriched with a new service: bikeMi, the yellow and red bikes managed by Clear Channel, will have three new virtual stations, i.e. without racks and with only signs.
A fixed-stall sharing that is easier to implement which the Municipality, ATM and Clear Channel have decided to experiment with to especially facilitate home-school travel made more complicated by the quota rules that still affect public transport due to the pandemic.
Three stations have been identified near as many high schools precisely to respond to the needs also expressed by the School Pact: the station in via Apulejo - viale Campania which mainly serves the R. Donatelli - B. Pascal scientific high school, the station in via Hajech which serves the Brera artistic high school and the via della Commenda station which serves the G. Berchet classical high school.
Each of these stations, which are part of a pilot project, can accommodate 20 electric bicycles. There are initially 250 bikes enabled for the service, a smart lock has been implemented for them which blocks/unblocks their use and which allows them to be collected and returned both in dedicated areas and in traditional physical stations.
The virtual stations are made with signage only and will be made visible thanks to a pole that indicates their presence. This is a service that allows fixed-stall bike sharing to be made more widespread and, once the experimentation is concluded, the virtual stalls will be able to find locations in many neighborhoods with particular attention to places where it is not currently possible to install bike racks for technological reasons and physical spaces.
Accreditation to the system will always take place via a smartphone application and during the procedure the user will be given the option to choose to go to one of the virtual stations. If so, the system will select one of the bikes with smart locks for the user.
The BikeMi fleet has a total of 5.430 vehicles of which 1.000 are electric and 150 with child seats. In total there are 322 rack stations to which the three virtual stations are added from today.
The development of cycling has seen a particular increase starting from the spring of 2020 with the first reopenings after the lockdowns due to the pandemic and the need to quickly offer an alternative to the need to move around the city: the cycle path network has been developed with 76 kilometers of new urban routes which allows Milan to now have a total of 300 kilometers of cycle routes. Furthermore, specifically for school mobility, since September 2020, 87 new racks have been installed at the service and upon request of schools, within them or in related locations, creating 435 bicycle spaces. There are currently a total of 7.674 racks for 33.640 bike stalls, there were 6.016 in 2015 for 25.955 stalls, with an increase of 30%.
Today the mobility of the city increasingly needs to integrate public transport, sharing, bicycles, to move more, better and insecurity. And this experimentation allows us to accelerate this process.
Updated: 01/10/2021