Skip to main content

European bike sharing market fuelled by innovations and government support

New research by Frost & Sullivan, European Bike Sharing Market, Forecast to 2025, indicates that the bike sharing fleet will more than double in size from 151,302 units in 2016 to 341,250 units in 2025. Southern and Western Europe have high public bike sharing service (BSS) activity. About 196 cities in Southern Europe have more than 35,000 rental bikes; in Western Europe, 150 cities have nearly 70,000 rental bikes. Spain and France are the strongest markets, but the UK, Germany and Italy are expanding quic
February 7, 2017 Read time: 2 mins
New research by 2097 Frost & Sullivan, European Bike Sharing Market, Forecast to 2025, indicates that the bike sharing fleet will more than double in size from 151,302 units in 2016 to 341,250 units in 2025. Southern and Western Europe have high public bike sharing service (BSS) activity. About 196 cities in Southern Europe have more than 35,000 rental bikes; in Western Europe, 150 cities have nearly 70,000 rental bikes. Spain and France are the strongest markets, but the UK, Germany and Italy are expanding quickly.

As densely populated urban centres all over the world grapple with issues of rising fuel consumption and carbon emissions, green mobility solutions such as public bike sharing service (BSS) are rising to prominence. This shift away from personal cars towards sustainable mobility solutions is bolstered by the high parking fees, volatile fuel costs and growing congestion in busy urban areas.

Although BSS enjoys escalating demand, high insurance costs could prove a deterrent to its wide-scale adoption. Furthermore, safety guidelines of bike sharing programmes are often not aligned with those mandated by insurance schemes, necessitating deeper analysis and resolution of the insurance issue.

“Urban commuters are considering multiple mobility options to optimise travel time and convenience for short distance travel of less than five kilometres,” said Frost & Sullivan mobility research analyst Debanjali Sen. “Consumer interest has prompted several BSS operators to explore integration of bike sharing with public transit and other modes of shared transport such as car sharing/ride sharing on a unified digital platform for ease of payment and bookings.”

Related Content

  • September 26, 2019
    Singapore aims to set MaaS benchmark
    Delegates at this year’s ITS World Congress in Singapore will be able to experience Mobility as a Service for themselves in the form of MobilityX’s Zipster app
  • February 18, 2014
    Europe lagging behind on standard ESC deployment
    According to Frost & Sullivan, the European Electronic Stability Control (ESC) market is expected to reach a market value of close to US$2.7 billion by 2020. Among the various original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), it is the upper tiers in the pyramid that attract maximum fitment rates, with the German big three claiming close to 100 per cent fitment across the eight segments they cater to. ESC is the most dominant enabler for active and passive safety technologies. Built into a car, it is crucial to a
  • June 20, 2016
    Automotive vehicle to everything (V2X) communications market 2016-2026
    Research by Visiongain claims that the worldwide demand for connected cars is increasing at a rapid pace. Last year, the amount of customers willing to change the car brand for better connectivity has almost doubled. The willingness to pay the subscription for connected services went up by 10% in the same period. Chinese consumers are especially excited about car connectivity; more than half are willing to change their car for better connectivity. Visiongain assesses that sales of new passenger cars equi
  • January 7, 2014
    Study forecasts growth of self-driving cars
    In its latest study, “Emerging Technologies: Autonomous cars—not if, but when,”, IHS Automotive forecasts total worldwide sales of self-driving cars (SDC) will grow from nearly 230 thousand in 2025 to 11.8 million in 2035 – seven million SDCs with both driver control and autonomous control and 4.8 million that have only autonomous control. In all, there should be nearly 54 million self-driving cars in use globally by 2035. The study anticipates that nearly all of the vehicles in use are likely to be self