Bicing - Barcelona city bicycles


Bicing is Bicycle Borrowing in Barcelona

Bicing city bikes Barcelona


Barcelona's city bike system is called Bicing.

Bicing is not available for tourists, only for residents of Barcelona.

Tourists can rent bikes by the hour or day from the many Barcelona bike rental stores.

Bicing has become a more important part of Barcelona's public transport system.

Barcelona city council launched the city bike system El Bicing - pronounced "bee-zing" - in 2007. Electric Bicing bikes were added in 2016 and are now widely available.

Barcelona's Bicing city bike system is only available to residents of Barcelona and is intended as a public transport service for short bicycle journeys of maximum 30 minutes in duration.

For this reason it is not available as a sightseeing bike option.

Tourists visiting Barcelona can rent bikes at the many tourist bike rental companies who rent bikes at very affordable hourly rates.

Website Barcelona Bicing
App Bicing Barcelona
MAP bicing pick-up & drop-off points
Tourist bike rentals Barcelona
Tourist bike tours Barcelona

Bicing has become very popular with Barcelona residents and over 120,000 subscribers signed up. When Bicing in Barcelona launched in 2007, there were just 750 "bicing" bikes available at 50 pick-up/drop off points in the city located mostly near Metro stations and municipal parking places.

In 2012 there were 420 bicing stations and 6,000 Bicing bikes available and in 2012 around 40.000 daily journeys were made which comes to around eleven million journeys a year.

The objective of Bicing was and is to encourage Barcelona residents to make short trips by bicycle to help reduce the number of cars circulating in Barcelona, so many of the Bicing stations are by metro stations, parks and car parks.

Bicing is financed both by users and income from the implementation of green-area parking regulations, which was also designed to encourage cleaner transport in Barcelona. Bicing prices includes a third party insurance if bicing users cause damage to others.

Prices Barcelona city bikes
Tarifa plana
Annual subscription price €50
First 30 minutes on regular bike: free
First 30 minutes on electric bike: €0.35

Additional  30 minutes periods can be bought
Prices Barcelona city bikes
Tarfia uso
Annual subscription price €35
First 30 minutes on regular bike: €0.35
First 30 minutes on electric bike: €0.55
Additional  30 minutes periods can be bought

See full Bicing prices


How Barcelona city bikes works  


Bicing barcelona - bike borrowing

A paid up subscriber of the bicing system gets a personal bicing card in the post or at the bicing office. The Bicing card is used to release and deliver bicing bikes from the automatic bicing stands around Barcelona. When a bicing bike is released, the bicing user then has 30 minutes free to get to their destination and drop off the bike at another bicing pick up/drop off location.

The first half hour of bicing is free and then it costs a small fee for each additional 30 minute period until you reach the maximum allowed time of 2 hours in total.

After that there is a penalty charge per hour for failing to drop off the bicing bike.

After three penalty charges your bicing account will be closed.

This user revenue generates around 25% of the total cost of the Barcelona bicing system.

Despite occasional frustration, when bicing racks might be full or when bikes are out of order, Bicing is a huge success and Barcelona is fast climbing up the world list of top bicycle friendly cities.

Bicycling is clean, healthy and quiet and Bicing has introduced the use of a bike as a daily transport system to many residents of Barcelona.

A big and obvious benefit of using the Bicing system rather than owning your own bicycle, is that Bicing users have access to hundreds of bikes all over Barcelona, instead of owning one bike, which might have been stolen.

Bicing operation times


Bicing barcelona - city bikes

Sunday to Thursdays:  
Bicing stands open all day from except from midnight to 05.00.
During the night you can only drop-off bicing bikes, not pick them up.

Friday and Saturday: 
Bicing stands  open all hours of day for both pìck-up and drop-off of bikes.
On certain days during special events like big festivals the Bicing is open all night.

Bicing bike specificatons

The bicing bike of Barcelona have 3 gears, an adjustable saddle and lights that switch on automatically at dusk. The operator of El Bicing in Barcelona is Clearchannel, who also manage successful Smartbike systems in other European cities including Oslo, Stockholm and Lyon. 

The Bicing cards are on sale online. Visit the bicing website (in Spanish and Catalan only) has information about current and future Bicing locations and a real time map showing how many bicing bikes and parking places are available at each location.

Bicing website
Tourist bike rental Barcelona 

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Last Updated on Wednesday, 28 December 2022 12:26
 

Wednesday, 30 October 2024


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