Enlarge image
E-bikes from Lime
Photo:
Political moments / imago images
Lukas Grießhammer, sports teacher from Nuremberg, likes to go to work by bike.
But even though he has his own, he often takes a public rental bike when the weather is nice in the morning.
Simply scan the QR code on the bike and off you go.
"If it rains in the afternoon, I take the subway home," says the 31-year-old.
Usually he will find a bike nearby, in the city center you can park the rental bikes on every street corner.
In the meantime, however, it often happens that the nearest station is empty, notes Grießhammer: "Before Corona, I always found a bike quickly, which is no longer the case."
Cycling is booming, and more people are currently discovering bike sharing for themselves.
There are several drivers for this: There is the climate crisis and the debate about more sustainable mobility.
In the transport sector in particular, CO₂ must be saved.
There is the impending traffic blackout in many cities, with a fleet of almost 50 million cars in Germany - with around 40 million households.
And there is also Corona: For fear of contracting the virus, many have switched from buses and trains to cars, but also to bicycles.
The result: Record sales in bike shops - 17 percent more sales were achieved by the stores in 2020. In addition, there were delivery bottlenecks for new bikes and e-bikes.
In addition to the purchase bikes, the rental option is also booming.
The industry already had a turnover of 256 million euros in 2018, according to the latest figures in the “Bicycle Industry Study”.
After the industry initially caused trouble because cheap bikes ended up in rivers or on trees, the market has now consolidated: the market leaders Nextbike and Call a Bike have prevailed against all kinds of Asian providers.
Nextbike, for example, benefited from Corona.
Founded in Leipzig in 2004, the provider now has around 26,000 rental bikes on the streets in 80 cities.
The main competitor, Call a Bike from Deutsche Bahn, has 16,000 bikes in around the same number of municipalities.
Nextbike continued to grow in 2020, with the number of users increasing by 50 percent across Germany.
That is surprising.
Normally, bike-sharing providers earn money from commuters and city tourists who have been working from home since the pandemic and have been on vacation on the terrace.
In addition, the bike rental business is closely linked to buses and trains.
But public transport literally collapsed during the pandemic.
In the first lockdown, passenger numbers fell by 90 percent in some places, and public transport did not reach its pre-Corona level again afterwards.
Many who switched to cars or bicycles for fear of full trams could not come back permanently, according to a report on mobility in corona times.
Micro adventures in your own city
However, many cities reacted with measures that should make switching to bicycles easier: They set up pop-up bike paths or made the first half an hour when renting bicycles free.
In other cities, free minutes for the public rental bike systems are included in the public transport subscription.
The fact that bike sharing did not collapse together with the rest of the local traffic also has to do with the fact that rental bikes are no longer used only for commuting. A survey by the Ministry of Transport shows that in 2020 more people cycled in their free time and less on commuting.
The providers feel it: In addition to the typical commuter routes from A to B, Nextbike recorded more tours.
City dwellers whose bikes were broken in the basement and who wanted to stretch their legs in lockdown use the bikes for “micro-adventures in their own city,” as the company puts it.
Take Berlin, for example: "There we recorded a lot of loans and returns at Tempelhofer Feld in winter," says a Nextbike spokeswoman.
»This is not a tourist hotspot, especially at this time of year, but an urban excursion destination.
For people who say: I have to get out of here. "
But is this trend going to continue?
There are reasons for doubt.
According to a study, cycle paths made up around nine percent of all traffic routes in autumn 2020, which was relatively little affected by Corona, and thus no more than in the same month three years earlier.
"Those who change trains will certainly have different affinities for cycling: some will be happy when they can ride the bus again," says Jana Kühl, professor of cycle traffic management at the Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences, "but others who have tried it now, will stay with the bike even if they no longer have to wait for the bus. ”All in all, it can be assumed that“ the use of bike sharing will at least remain stable and will probably continue to grow ”.
For many women, bike sharing has so far been too unsafe
Overall, the bike-sharing target group is still quite small.
According to the Ministry of Transport, only three percent of Germans use rental bikes at least several times a month.
This value has to be put into perspective, says Kühl: In addition to the dominance of the car, there is only a small piece of cake left for public transport and bicycles.
"And bike sharing is only a niche within the use of bicycles - but one that is developing well."
So where is there still potential for growth?
Nextbike wants to reach more women for whom the sharing principle was previously too unsafe, says the company spokeswoman.
On this point, some providers can still catch up anyway.
Two years ago, only the Nextbike and Call a Bike systems performed well at Stiftung Warentest.
The rental of cargo bikes and e-bikes is also very promising, says cycling expert Kühl. The electric motor makes cycling interesting for even more people - but not everyone likes to buy their own e-bike for a lot of money.
