Public bicycle rental will open in the city

The initiator of the public bicycle rental in Dnipropetrovsk is one of its residents. “The idea of free bicycle rental has long been practiced in Europe,” Yevhen Khil said at the press conference. “In the countries of the former Soviet Union such service was launched last year in Saint Petersburg. I saw information about this in one of the social networks. Since I ran a paid bike rental, I started to think whether something like this could be arranged in Dnipropetrovsk.” The ides of Freebike system in Europe means that bicycles are parked right on the streets and anyone can take and ride them under the condition that later he would leave it in a public place or a public transport stop. It turned out that in Dnipropetrovsk quite a number of people were willing to donate their bicycles. The organizer of the project says that he takes them in any condition and promises to repair them at his own expense if there is a need for that.

“The project has just begun and people are already calling me asking where they can bring a bike,” said Khil. “As an experiment, I was the first one to donate my own bike. I take them in any condition, I could even use parts from the really bad ones for repairing other bicycles later.” Now Khil is thinking how to organize a Freebike network adjusting it to Ukrainian realities. At the initial stage it is planned to park bikes near round-the-clock cafes. “Perhaps there will be some restriction on time of bike rental. One person can take a bike and ride it up to three hours. This might be done in case if there are many people who would want to ride a bike. Also, at first I plan to take a small deposit so that a person would not take the bike for his own use, would not steal or break it because we still have to understand whether our people are ready to use Freebike service and be careful with the bikes,” said Khil. He believes that a bike as a means of transport is much better than a car. “I am a bike fan and want to draw people’s attention to cycling and bike rides. Cycling brings joy to people and makes them healthy. I have seen this when people rent a bike and then come joyful and happy after a ride,” told the initiator of the project. Soon Khil will release a special map with tourist bike routes for sightseeing in Dnipropetrovsk.