It’s been a quarter of a century since the fascinating idea of rental bikes, which you can easily borrow and return, was born in Munich. It was a bit cumbersome at first, however, when Christian Hogl and Josef Gundel, both of Munich, presented their city with the “Call a Bike”, because the bikes were only around the yellow post office telephone boxes at the time.
The reason for this was that back then, users had to call a hotline on a landline to get the code to unlock the bike. Later, when cell phones caught on, the code was sent to you via text message. The young, hopeful start-up was already in financial trouble at the time and sold the entire system to Deutsche Bahn.
20 years have passed since then, and now Deutsche Bahn AG, together with the Deutsches Museum in Hall 1 of the Verkehrszentrum, is presenting the development of “bike sharing” in a special show that will open this Friday and will run until April 16, 2023. It’s the world’s first such exhibition on the subject, and given that Munich was once a pioneer on the subject, it’s in the right place.
The view goes back several decades.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
Even if the focus is on the future: The past of cycling is not neglected.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
An overview map shows the distribution of the rental stations.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
The attractively designed display boards with lots of bikes show, with examples from Germany but also from all over the world, how the idea of rental bikes is becoming increasingly popular. In Munich alone there are currently three major providers. In addition to the “Call a Bike” system of Deutsche Bahn, which now has 1,200 bikes, MVG Rad has been offering 4,500 bikes since 2015. In addition, since 2019 the provider TIER E-Bike has also been involved, being the only one to offer pedelecs. Brand new is Avocargo Bike, which has 47 cargo bikes available for hire.
In the exhibition, a large map of the city makes it clear how dense the network has become with stations where you can find the bikes and, ideally, return them again. They are also far less conspicuous on sidewalks than the many e-scooters. Four years ago it was very different. Out of nowhere, about 7,000 yellow rental bikes from Singapore’s Obike provider suddenly appeared on the sidewalks and became a nuisance because of their poor quality. When the company then filed for bankruptcy, it took until the beginning of 2019 for the last yellow wheels to disappear from the cityscape.
It is by no means the case that rental bikes are not useful, quite the opposite. They represent an important building block in climate protection because they enable people to get around in an environmentally friendly way in combination with local public transport. “The shared use of vehicles is a way that keeps mobility available for everyone and yet conserves resources,” said Bettina Gundler, head of the traffic center, on a first tour of the exhibition. Isabella Grahsl from DB Connect GmbH, which offers 13,000 rental bikes nationwide on behalf of Deutsche Bahn, sees a lot of potential in bike sharing.
Decades ago, bikes could be rented in Denmark with a deposit coin
Walking through the exhibition makes it clear that Germany still has to catch up on this topic. In Copenhagen, for example, rental bikes are used much more frequently than in Germany. Rental bikes also have a comparatively long tradition in Denmark. As early as the early 1990s, some cities were offering rental bikes that were extremely easy to set in motion. It was enough to slide a deposit coin into the lock, like with a shopping trolley.
This is completely different with the latest generation of rental bikes, they have a sophisticated locking mechanism. However, the vandalism that raged on Obike’s yellow bikes a few years ago (one can be found in a shed in the exhibition) is increasingly causing problems for the operators. They are therefore investing in the technology of the wheels, especially in the locks, so that they are hardly or very difficult to crack – which a so-called challenge at Tiktok recently called for.
Far from the overall tariff system: Isabella Grahsl from DB Connect GmbH still sees plenty of hurdles on the way to uniform solutions.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
What would accelerate the triumph of rental bikes would of course be a uniform app and an overall tariff system, ideally integrated into the local transport tariffs. But that’s still a long way off in Germany, says Isabella Grahsl from DB Connect. Incidentally, the company also operates systems on behalf of local authorities, for example in Hamburg, Stuttgart and Lüneburg.
The guests of the exhibition can see for themselves exactly how the rental bikes work on Saturday, October 15, at the Long Night of Museums at the “Call a Bike” pop-up station at the Verkehrszentrum. Anyone who is registered in the Call-a-Bike app and uses the code “nachradeln” will receive a credit of five euros – enough to cycle from one museum to another during the night.