Hi bikelovers, I just want to share my day-to-day experience with a bike service for those who still live in a car oriented place. English is not my first language, so I’ll be glad to correct any mistake.

I live in Palma, the capital of Mallorca. We’re not a big city but we have a lot of tourism and as any other European city, we have a very old downtown and a modern big area around.

These are the bike stations at the center.

Historic of trips with time and cost.

You can check availability and filter (electric/non electric).

Some interesting points about the bike service:

• Bike-friendly city: Palma has always been a great city for biking but until recently it was seen as something only poor, flamboyant, weird people did. Ironically Mallorca is a well knonw place for cycling teams to come for training or staging, but taking the bike to go to work, dinner or fun in the city for local people was extremely rare.
• Pedestrian streets: As you can see at the main image, they did a good job banning cars from some streets or making space for bike lanes in those zones that for some reason they need to keep opened to transit. There’s still room for a lot of improvement here.
• Subsided: the city pays for everything with European funds. all cities can apply, present their project and most of them are approved. so any major cities in Spain got a similar service.
• Free-not-Free: you apply for the service and they charge you a deposit (10€), but as you can see in the photos most trips cost 0€ and you only pay if you pass certain time threshold. in Palma is 30 minutes, but in bigger cities can be 1 hour or more. that charge is only to avoid people abusing the system and keeping the bike for a long time. you’re supposed to take the bike, go somewhere and leave it at the closest bike station. they charge you 50 cents (half an euro) if you pass the first 30 minutes and it ramps up until 5€ if you keep it for several hours. so the maximum they “punish” you if you keep the bike is 5€ per day. I’m not talking about breaking or stealing, that’s a crime and by the way, it doesn’t really happen often here. Also you can return a bike and take another immediately (I know some big cities impose a waiting time for the same abusing reasons, but is not long anyway).
• Easy: you just download an app and fill a form. When they created the service there was some queue because they didn’t expect it to be so successful and were overwhelmed by the demand.
• Locals only: You need to be registered in the city to apply for the service, so no tourists allowed (even citizens from other parts of the country). Tourists can still rent or use services offered by hotels, is just this specific service that’s targeted to locals.
• Electric bikes: Some bikes are electric but most are not. I’d say the ratio is 5:1
• Political reasons: There was some discussion about the “need” of a service like this and unsurprisingly only right oriented parties were openly against but at the end even them realized it was unpopular blocking the project.

On a personal note, I’m baffled when a read the reasons against walkable/bikeable cities. Don’t fall for any of that crap, I have everything I need at walking distance and a lot more I don’t need at biking distance. We’re mediterranean, we literally live on the street.

I have spare rooms and bikes for everyone, so I invite any skeptical person to come to Mallorca and stay here for as long as they want.

Feel free to ask anything, some details may seem obvious to me living here.