A new Trend in Chennai Metro City - Bicycle sharing!
Posted on: 27/Dec/2019 5:11:13 PM
With the rental bicycles made available for easier and faster connectivity, especially for the daily commuters, most of these bicycles rented from Marina are by fitness enthusiasts.
Greater Chennai Corporation had launched the bicycle sharing project. The main objective of this project was to provide providing last-mile connectivity and promoting non-motorised transport.
In this regard, a valuable bit of information is shared by Ranjit Srivastava, Vice President (marketing) of SmartBike Mobility.
He said, “The ridership has increased after the operation timings were changed to make the bicycles available from 5 am to 10 pm. Earlier, these were available between 8 am and 8 pm. Ridership attains peak from 5 am to 8 am and 5 pm to 9 pm, especially at Marina. This is mainly due to fitness enthusiasts using bicycles.”
He further said, “As many as 487 riders had used the bicycles on Christmas day from seven cycle stations near Marina Beach.”
An interesting statistics
It is established that on an average, around 600 persons use SmartBikes on weekdays and around 1,000 riders on weekends.
Of the total 1,000 ridership recorded during weekends, 500 riders are taking bicycles from Marina Beach. Most of the riders are between the age group of 18 and 40 years.
In this regard, Vice President Ranjith further added, “Most of the riders at Marina are tourists while IT professionals use our service on Old Mahabalipuram Road and East Coast Road stretch. Riders in Anna Nagar, Shenoy Nagar and other areas mostly use bicycles for last-mile connectivity. Interestingly, riders from Anna Nagar use bicycles to reach Marina Beach on weekends. Ridership is higher in these areas on weekdays,”
Usage and immediate future plans
It is also gathered that around 50 to 60 per cent of SmartBike users are regulars. As of now, SmartBike Mobility that operates the cycle sharing project on behalf of Chennai Corporation under Smart City Mission has already created as many as 50 dockless cycle stations across the city and 500 bicycles are in use.
DPR the city will get bicycle stations at 378 locations for a fleet of 4,976 bicycles.
During the 1st Phase, the Corporation had given clearance for 68 dockless bicycles stations, and the service provider opened 50 of them.
Presently, they are making arrangements to open 18 more bicycle stations. Also, SmartBike Mobility has r requested the civic body to accord permission to open stations at 31 new locations, including Ambattur, Besant Nagar, Adyar and others.
Rental fare
The civic body collects Rs 5 per hour through a mobile application and Rs 9 would be charged for every next 30 minutes. Users could hire bicycles on a daily basis and also on a monthly and quarterly basis.
e-cycles from January!
With an objective to win more customers - more ridership -, SmartBike Mobility has decided to introduce battery-operated bicycles in the city. The new e-cycles will enable riders to make long-distance rides.
Vice President Rajnith observed, “The e-cycles will be introduced by the end of January and the move will increase ridership by at least three times. Initially, we will bring 500 e-cycles.”
The batteries retrofitted with the bicycles would charge themselves while the users ride the bicycles, as mechanical energy would be converted into electrical energy. The electrical energy would make the bicycle riding easy and fast. They would clock up to 20 kilometres per hour.
