What should be the great cycling revolution in Madrid has started with the wrong foot. The Spanish capital proposed this 2023 to expand its public bicycle loan service and to do so they municipalized BiciMad.
This municipalization had the objective of reaching the 21 districts of Madrid and massively expanding the service. The number of stations would increase from 258 to more than 600 and the number of bicycles from 2,850 to almost 7,000. The elements for an urban cycling explosion were there, but the result has been far from satisfactory.
To ensure that the citizens of Madrid could test all these implementations, the City Council decided to make the service free from March 7 to July 31. But this action that was supposed to encourage the population to take up the bike has ended up condemning the service.
The fact that you do not have to pay to use the bicycles has plunged the service into absolute chaos where many users disregard the responsibility that comes with using them. Images of bicycles scattered throughout the city have become common in recent days and many of them do not end their journey at a station.
The problems do not end here and in addition to little care on the part of some users, there are many bicycles that the City Council is not able to locate. Currently only 732 bicycles of the 4,264 that the service has are located. 82% of bicycles, lost.
The search for and recovery of all these bicycles has been intensified with a larger team to carry out this work, but many of them are already within private housing estates or other places with difficult access. The problem is huge and it is difficult to solve, but it is vital to solve it so that Madrid can enjoy the cycling service it needs.
