There is nothing more frustrating for people who sign up for the metropolitan public bicycle service than arriving at the station and seeing it full of electric bikes without batteries that cannot be used. It happens more than should be usual to the around 20,000 people who have registered in AMBici, the metropolitan Bicing, since its progressive launch eight months ago.
The root of the problem is the lack of connection to the electrical grid at the stations where electric bicycles are left. In half of them, the bikes should automatically recharge when they are parked, although as of today there are none of them doing so. Problems with the supply of electrical material explain part of the delay, although the vice president of mobility of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB), Carlos Cordón, assures that "the problem lies with the electricity company, which is taking a long time to respond."
The long procedures to be able to connect the stations to the electricity grid were already encountered by Barcelona City Council during the deployment of the new Bicing in 2019. At that time, those responsible for the Catalan capital chose to wait. The AMB, on the other hand, pushed forward, driven by the urgency of putting bikes on the streets before the municipal elections. As a temporary solution, the company in charge of managing the service spends every night with the vans, picks up the bikes and takes them to a warehouse to recharge them. In the morning, he leaves them parked at the stations again.
The problem at AMBici is increased by a demand for the service much higher than expected. In the first eight months, more than one million trips have been made. Each bicycle is used between four and five times a day and that forces them to have to be collected and recharged every two or three days at most since when they run out of battery they cannot be used.
This setback is delaying the deployment of the service, which at this point in the year should already have 2,600 bikes in 236 stations in 15 municipalities. In Sant Feliu de Llobregat it has just begun to be installed and there are still Sant Adrià de Besòs and l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, a great challenge due to the high level of uses expected in the second city of Catalonia and because a thirty stations, three of them interchange between the metropolitan service and Barcelona's Bicing. The location of adjacent stops of both services already works in Zona Universitària to respond to those that connect the Catalan capital via Diagonal and their use is such that it has already been necessary to increase the number of anchors. Even so, in the afternoon it is difficult to find an available bike. Or rather, with batteries, since there are some, but they cannot be taken.
The period between five in the afternoon and nine at night is the one that registers the highest peak of use, with more than 700 bikes per hour. Between seven and eight in the morning and two in the afternoon are the other moments of greatest dynamism. Stations located next to metro stops or large railway interchanges are the ones that register the most movement. By cities, Badalona leads the uses, followed by Viladecans, Cornellà and Castelldefels.
