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Nextbike has won the tender to renew its contract to operate in Warsaw, Poland.
Warsaw is the biggest urban bicycle system in Poland and is one of the biggest in Europe, and after 10 years of operation, the Veturilo system will continue to be run by Nextbike.
The collaboration between Nextbike, owned by German shared-transport operator Tier, will see significant investment and updates for the city’s urban transport system.
“The new Veturilo system is to meet the expectations of the most demanding users”, said Lukasz Puchalski, director of Warsaw Roads Authority.
Nextbike now plans to repair broken bikes within 12 hours of them appearing on the notification list. Additionally, 10% of the fleet will be made up of e-bikes.
There will also be an increase in the number of docking racks available in Warsaw, equal to the number of bikes (at least 3,000).
The racks will be standard, without an electric lock. Instead, each bike will have a wheel lock to immobilize it and a GPS receiver. The station itself will also be GPS-enabled, allowing to designate “station areas” in which the bikes can be returned. As a result, bikes can also be returned outside the permanent stations. For an additional fee, people using the system will be able to do this at any location, subject of course to certain rules and traffic regulations. Moreover, this opens the possibility to install up to 10 temporary stations each calendar year. They will be set up for a maximum of 48 hours on the occasion of sports or cultural events.
Read more: Testing the water: MMB editor Alex Ballinger trials his first ever e-bike
Since the beginning of Veturilo, its popularity has been constantly growing. The system survived the pandemic, although restrictions imposed by the government, remote working, and smaller urban traffic for the first time stopped user growth.
In June this year, a new record of daily rentals was set – 31,488. The last time rentals reached above 30,000 was on June 28, 2019, before the pandemic.
