PBSC's 2023 retrospective

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For 15 years now, we've been spreading the collective power of bike-sharing  around the world.  By joining forces with our partners around the world, we've been able to shape 2023 into a successful year for bike-sharing. 

Through countless expansions, major launches in new cities, our partners achieving new ridership records and much more, we're proud to say it's been a successful year.

As we look forward to an exciting year in 2024, let's take a moment to reflect on what we have achieved in 2023!

Together, we’re going further 

Once again this year, our PBSC family has grown, happily welcoming new partners and proudly deploying new systems. New cities joined our large network in 2023, including Madrid & Valladolid in Spain, and Curitiba in Brazil. 

Partly or fully electric bike-sharing solutions have been introduced, and we have deployed more than 10,000 bikes, including 9,400 e-bikes, and 800 additional stations.

Our systems are thinking bigger!

Following strong demand for bike-sharing, 15 of our systems have expanded their fleets. Major expansions have been completed in Montreal, Toronto, Quebec City, Pittsburgh, Guadalajara, Barcelona, Sibiu and much more. Thus, 40 million people around the world now have access to a bike-share solution.

Here are some examples of expansions completed in 2023: 

• In Guadalajara, Mexico, we added 772 FIT bikes and 60 more stations to the fleet, for a total of 3,200 bikes and 305 stations.
• 1,800 additional bikes, including 1,300 E-FIT e-bikes and 160 stations, were introduced to the Bike Share Toronto fleet, which now comprises 9,000 bikes and 840 stations in total.
• 220 bikes, including 154 electric bikes, joined the POGOH fleet in Pittsburgh, which now boasts a total of 583 bikes.

As part of these expansions, nearly 6,000 bikes have been deployed!

And it goes on! Some of our systems have already announced upcoming expansions for 2024. These include Bicing in Barcelona, which plans to add 1,000 e-bikes to its fleet. There's also Bicicoruña in La Coruña, which will integrate 300 e-bikes into its network, and àVélo in Quebec City, which plans to increase its fleet to 1,300 electric bikes.

Heading towards electrification

A trend is emerging through these numerous large-scale rollouts: electric bikes. E-bikes are a hit, and riders are crazy about them! In Detroit, for example, the MoGo bike-sharing system reports that the scheme's electric bikes are used three times more than its mechanical bikes. 

As a result, demand for electric bikes in our systems is increasing. In fact, 80% of the bikes we deployed this year are e-bikes, which means there are more than 13,200 additional PBSC e-bikes hitting the roads!

Key fact: in 2023, we launched our biggest fully-electric bike-sharing fleet in the city of Madrid. Deployed this past March, Bicimad features 7,500 E-FIT e-bikes and 611 smart charging stations. 

Our partners are smashing records !

These milestones couldn't have been achieved without the contribution of our riders. In fact, these launches and expansions reflect the growing popularity of our public bike share systems, with many cities breaking their ridership and membership records this year! 

• In Montreal, Bixi recorded over 11.4 million journeys during its summer season (compared with 9 million in 2022).
• In Madrid, over 1.2 million trips were made on Bicimad bikes in just one month.
• In Quebec City, àVélo concluded an amazing season, recording 670,782 rides and boasting over 26,000 active members.
• More outstanding records were broken in Bogota, Curitiba, Mexico City, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Valladolid, and many more!

Other cities have achieved significant milestones since their launches: 

• While Biki celebrated 6 years of operation in Honolulu, the system reached 6 million trips.
• MiBici, in Guadalajara, celebrated 8 years of service in 2023, reaching over 22 million journeys and more than 130,000 subscribers.
• Since the system was launched in 2019, Monabike recorded more than 1.8 million bike trips in Monaco.

Congratulations to our partners on these incredible milestones!

Embracing sustainability!

All these records have led to an impressive result: Over 100 million bike trips have been completed on PBSC bikes worldwide, saving around 85 million kg of CO2 emissions. To put it into perspective, this is equivalent to saving emissions of 850 flights around the Earth!

These achievements would not have been possible without our partners' support. We are particularly proud to work with our operating partners spread across 50 cities throughout the world. We are very grateful for our amazing community. 

With over 600 million trips made on PBSC bikes worldwide since 2009, we are thrilled to bring citizens a healthy, sustainable and active transportation solution that contributes to making people happy and healthy. We're already looking forward to upcoming exciting projects!

Launches, expansions... we haven't told you everything yet! Stay tuned with PBSC to discover what we have coming up in 2024!