Operation
The city council and Clear Channel manage and maintain the system. To use it, users must acquire a yearly membership. Currently the network consists of more than 400 stations to lend and return over 6000 bicycles distributed throughout the system. The stations are situated through most of the flat areas of the city with a distance of around 300 to 400 metres between each one, with many situated next to public transport stops to allow for intermodal use. Metro Stations usually have signs pointing to the locations of nearest Bicing stations. The bikes can be lent from, and returned to, any station in the system, making it suitable for one way travel. Each station has between 15 and 30 parking slots to fix and lock the bicycle.
To rent a bike one simply swipes the contactless RFID-card at a service station to be personally identified by the system, which then unlocks a bike from the support frame. Bicycles can be used for the first 30 minutes with no extra cost, with subsequent half hour blocks (up to 2 hours) costing 0.70 € each. Use of a bicycle for more than 2 hours at a time is discouraged with a penalty rate of 4.20 € per hour, but also with the possibility of having your membership cancelled after a certain number of uses in excess of 2 hours. To return a bicycle one simply places the bike in a spare slot at a Bicing station: the bike is recognised automatically and is locked into place (as indicated by the small light at the slot turning red), so one does not need to swipe the RFID-card to return the bike. Nevertheless users are encouraged to swipe the card to receive a system message that the returned bike has been correctly recognized as the small red light sometimes give erroneous signals.
Specialised vans are used to redistribute Bicing bicycles between the stations should it be required to even out usage patterns. However, as of November 2007, the number and frequency of vans is not able to keep up during the peak hours, making it very difficult to find a spot at which to return the bike.
Read more about this topic: Bicing
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