Bicycle sharing has already arrived in Lviv and Dnipropetrovsk

A bicycle sharing system has been in commission in Lviv since June 4, with five vehicles standing on the Rynok, the city’s main square. The initiative is a project of the City Workshop which will function on the square throughout June 2013. The project’s assistant manager Mariana Boryk tells The Day: “Lviv is currently working on developing bicycle infrastructure, including constructing bicycle paths. Now, it is up to the residents themselves to switch to bicycles, because at the moment, just one percent of daily commuters ride them. We have provided every Leopolitan with a chance to experience this mode of transportation. The project has proved to serve a real need, and we, the organizers, have decided to increase the number of two-wheelers due to the great demand for them. The only upsetting factor is the ephemeral nature of the project which will last only until the end of June, as part of the joint Ukrainian-German pilot project “Municipal Development and Modernization of Lviv’s Old Town,” implemented by the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ).”

Meanwhile, a bicycle sharing system in Dnipropetrovsk is gradually being established (Den covered this initiative in its No. 66, April 11, 2013). Yevhen Khil, the project’s driving force, says his sharing facility at 4 Serova Street provides bicycles to all comers on the condition of them leaving their ID as a deposit. Another such facility has been set up in the parking lot near a cyclist-friendly coffee shop in the center of Dnipropetrovsk. “This is the first phase of the bicycle sharing network, using the vehicles donated by Dnipropetrovsk’s citizens. For the time being, we are just trying to assess the need for such a network, and people need time to get used to it,” Khil says. There are three refurbished used bicycles in the system at the moment, but there will be 10 of them soon, available for all willing to take a ride across the Hloba Central Park and the Dnipro’s quay. The project is all about giving every citizen a chance to lease a bicycle for free at a dedicated parking facility. Creating a city-wide system is a difficult task, but students of the Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University have stepped forward with a similar project. “I met these girls who want to set up ten bicycle parking facilities near their school’s campus. We plan to have such parkings set up near other Dnipropetrovsk universities, too, mostly along Gagarina Avenue,” Khil adds. However, he says that it will be difficult for students to establish such a system, expensive as it will be, on their own, without needing some outside help, probably from the city and district authorities. Nevertheless, the activist believes that these issues are solvable, provided there is the desire and need to have bicycle parkings and a bicycle sharing system on the part of the citizenry.

Our regional correspondents report that other regions see providing bicycle parkings as a more pressing issue for now. Chernihiv’s parking and market utility set up its first bicycle parkings recently. According to Chernihiv City Council’s Department of Public Relations, the authorities have designated bicycle-parking spots to provide for the new tourist season. They have equipped every such parking with a map of the city’s historic central district, showing landmarks and historical sites, Vitalii Nazarenko reports. Similar maps have appeared at bicycle parkings of Chernivtsi, while Uzhhorod and Cherkasy focused their bicycle parking networks in the city centers, and Vinnytsia, seeing cycling as a promising transportation mode, went as far as setting up a pilot bicycle traffic light, Maksym Zotov reports. Reporting from Mykolaiv, Viacheslav Holovchenko tells us that the city’s cyclists are now marking their daily itineraries on map, helping to develop the city’s dedicated bicycle route project, to be presented at the city council’s session in a month’s time, when the council will discuss land acquisition for the construction of bicycle paths.