Bicimad registered a record number of trips yesterday, Tuesday, with 26,257, and subscribers, up to 142,440, the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, reported in a tweet.
“More and more people from Madrid are choosing bicimad to get around the city. Yesterday we once again broke a new record for trips and subscribers. Let’s continue making Madrid finally breathe. Thank you 142,440!” Almeida wrote on his social networks.
The last Governing Board of Madrid extended the free bicimad until December 31. In principle, the free service was scheduled until July 31, but the Board decided to extend the measure until the end of the year.
The municipal government seeks with this measure to encourage cyclist mobility in the capital and that citizens can learn about the advantages offered by the renewed public electric bicycle system managed by the Municipal Transport Company (EMT). It will be the first time that general free of charge has been extended consecutively for almost ten months.
Bicimad is already present in the 21 districts of the city and the definitive implementation of its 611 bases and 7,500 bicycles is expected to take place at the end of September.
Of the 611 stations that will make up the network, bicimad is progressively incorporating 122 bases in the districts of Hortaleza, Villaverde, Villa de Vallecas, Vicálvaro, San Blas-Canillejas and Barajas. In addition, the service has improved with the installation of 225 new stations in districts where the service already existed and another 264 old stations have been replaced by the new ones.
To guarantee the free and availability of bicycles for all users, as up to now, a bicycle will not be available for more than 30 continuous minutes free of charge.
You can make all the trips that are necessary per day but at the end of the journeys you will have to leave the vehicles at the bases. During this period, new subscriptions and their renewals will be completely free and users will not have to carry out any process to extend the free period.
The EMT encourages users who have not migrated from the old system to the new one to do so as soon as possible from the mobile application because its disconnection is scheduled for September 30. From that moment they will not be able to migrate their accounts from the previous system and they will only be able to subscribe by means of a new registration.
The expansion and technological renewal of bicimad requires an investment of 48.8 million euros. It has received 30 million European financing from Next Generation EU funds channeled through the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
