Bicycles

Mexico City Bike-Sharing Program Is Quadrupling in Size this Month

Published

September 10, 2012

Mexico City is quadrupling the size of its bike-sharing program this month. Within the next four weeks the number of available Ecobici bikes will increase from 1,000 to 4,000.

The mega-city will dramatically increase the overall size of its system: 185 new stations, 3,000 new bikes, and 43,000 new subscribers. The currently used system has been sold out of its memberships for awhile now.

“Mexico City launched a bike share system (Ecobici) in early 2010 with 70 stations and over a thousand bikes. After seeing a very small expansion in 2011 (15 stations), the system will finally receive a Phase 2, which is to be installed this month.”

Here are some more details on the changes:

Stations: from 90 to 275
Bikes: from 1,000 to 4,000
Annual Subscribers: from 30,000 to 73,000

The program is limited to annual subscribers, so it’s not available to tourists. And because of the limited nature of the system, there has been a member limit of only 30,000. This new greatly needed expansion will increase the member limit to 73,000 for now, and in the future to 100,000.

This upgrade will give Mexico City the seventh largest bike-sharing system in the world. But even with such a large system, it is set to be eclipsed by New York City’s massive 10,000-bike-strong system, which has already opened but will be expanding in the spring.

Source: Streetsblog
Image Credits: StreetsBlog; Ecobici (via Blogtown)

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Written By James Ayre

James Ayre's background is predominantly in geopolitics and history, but he has an obsessive interest in pretty much everything. After an early life spent in the Imperial Free City of Dortmund, James followed the river Ruhr to Cofbuokheim, where he attended the University of Astnide. And where he also briefly considered entering the coal mining business. He currently writes for a living, on a broad variety of subjects, ranging from science, to politics, to military history, to renewable energy.