The Madrid City Council decided this Thursday to extend the free municipal electric bicycle service Bicimad for five more months, until December 31.
The new bicycle model, which began operating on March 7, was accompanied by unlimited free use until July 31 with the aim of encouraging cyclist mobility in the capital and so that citizens could learn about the advantages offered by the renewed public electric bicycle system managed by the Municipal Transport Company.
The municipal spokesperson, Inmaculadas Sanz, highlighted that Bicimad is already present in the 21 districts of the city with a record number of users and it is expected that the definitive implementation of its 611 bases and 7,500 bicycles will take place at the end of September.
Since last May 26, when the old Bicimad system was completely eliminated, almost one million trips (973,060) have been registered, exceeding 20,000 daily trips on 19 occasions. Until then, it had only exceeded 17,000 uses on three occasions, all of them during the past term. On July 12, 24,835 daily uses were reached, the absolute record for the service.
On July 18, the system had 134,386 subscribers, 69.8% more than the 79,140 registered in April 2021 (the highest number of subscribers in its history).
The new model of bicycles, more manageable, ergonomic and robust and with a design focused on improving the user experience, has been gradually incorporated into the service and its implementation is expected to be completed on September 30.
Thanks to the expansion project, bicimad has reached 21 districts, maximizing intermodality and sustainable mobility throughout the capital. Of the 611 stations that will make up the network, bicimad is progressively incorporating 122 bases in the districts of Hortaleza, Villaverde, Villa de Vallecas, Vicálvaro, San Blas-Canillejas and Barajas. In addition, the service has improved with the installation of 225 new stations in districts where the service already existed and another 264 old stations have been replaced by the new ones.
To guarantee the free and availability of bicycles for all users, as up to now, a bicycle will not be available for more than 30 continuous minutes free of charge.
In addition, all the trips that are necessary per day can be made, but at the end of the journeys the vehicles will have to be left at the bases. During this period, new subscriptions and their renewals will be completely free and users will not have to carry out any process to extend the free period.
The EMT encourages users who have not migrated from the old system to the new one to do so as soon as possible from the mobile application because its disconnection is scheduled for September 30. From that moment on, they will not be able to migrate their accounts from the previous system and will only be able to subscribe through a new registration.
The expansion and technological renewal of bicimad is a project framed within the Madrid 360 Environmental Sustainability Strategy of the Madrid City Council, which aims to consolidate the city as a reference capital in the commitment to sustainable mobility and the improvement of air quality. In addition, this action, which requires an investment of 48.8 million euros, has received 30 million euros of European funding from Next Generation EU funds channeled through the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
