The Santander City Council has begun the installation of the eleven new closed and video-monitored parking spaces for bicycles; Two of them, with ten seats each, are already installed and operational in Ruiz de Alda street (in front of the entrance to the Central Library of Cantabria) and in Manuel Llano square (Cazoña).

In addition, one of the 40-seater modules is being assembled and installed in front of the Interfacultative building of the University of Cantabria, location and work that have been coordinated with the university community.

These days, work is being done on the connection to the existing electrical network, auctions and tests, and throughout the next week it will be made available to users, the City Council has reported in a press release.

At the beginning of July, the assembly of a 20-seater module at the entrance to the Albericia Complex is planned. Regarding the rest of the modules, they are currently being manufactured in the workshop and, meanwhile, the correct location is being analysed.

The new bike racks are part of the project ‘Promotion of active mobility, promotion of modal change and digital and sustainable transformation of urban transport in Santander’, which has 7.6 million euros of financing from European funds within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

The contract for the supply, installation, management and maintenance of these 11 new car parks was awarded to the company Intelligent Parking for an amount of 450,213 euros (subsidy from European funds: 219,171 euros).

This is the second batch of covered and video-monitored bike racks, which will mean the installation in the city of a total of eleven (3 units with 40 spaces, 3 with 20 and 5 with 10 spaces), for a total of 230 spaces.

As pointed out by the Councilor for Sustainable Mobility, César Díaz, all the modules will be installed during the month of July and he has highlighted the success of the closed bike racks that the city already has, the result of the City Council’s commitment to promoting the use of the bike.

“We are advancing with new facilities so that the people of Santander are encouraged by the use of more sustainable, active and healthy transport”, he remarked.

All the new bike racks are made of aluminum and polycarbonate, video-monitored and ready for automatic use by mobile device.

The eleven modules are made up of the base or frame, the tubes responsible for holding and locking the bicycles, and the rods to position the wheels, as well as equipped with a sliding aluminum sheet door for optimal accessibility.

The automatically opening doors give users access to park or collect their bicycles through the ‘PVerde’ mobile app and also through a keyboard located at the entrance, and are equipped with an anti-entrapment system and security cells.