Sevici
Cool eh? New public rental bikes.
And quite reasonable. It costs 10€ for an annual membership card and when you pick up a bike the first half hour is free, the next hour is 50 cents and after that it’s 1€ per hour. Conceivably you could always ride for free as long as you kept swapping bikes every half hour, but that sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.
I’ve got a very pretty mountain bike that’s been up in storage for ages because there’s really no place to keep it in this apartment (when I lived next door there was a nice roomy entrance that was perfect). Lately I’ve been thinking about getting it back in action because there are all kinds of recently installed bike paths in Sevilla, but Nog also wants to go out cycling so the rental bikes are an excellent solution.
Sent in our applications today so we could be riding by the weekend. 🙂
casa azahar 
Wow, that’s a great idea. Is Seville hilly? Sydney, or at least the North Shore, is too hilly for bikes as far as I’m concerned… unless they have an engine!
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That is very cool. More cities need to invest in decent biking lanes, as far as I’m concerned.
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I live in an extremely biking friendly city. OK, there are hills, but none overwhelming, and the bike routes are abundant and well kept.
Some of the more frequently used ones are high priority snowy winter mornings, and before seven o’clock they shall be ploughed and sanded. There are caravans of helmet clad bicycklists even in the coldest mornings here. Maybe a little scarcer when it’s below -20C.
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I’m surprised that there are so many bike paths where you are, dq – you Swedes must be a hardy lot.
Sevilla is pretty flat. I can’t remember exactly how many kilometres of bike lanes they’ve put in over the past couple of years, but it’s quite a lot. And well placed too.
I was wondering if the reason the first half hour is free is to encourage people to start taking these bikes to work. At the moment there are about 35 ‘bike stations’ in operation, but according to the map on the Sevici website, there are going to be about 160 of them.
I’d certainly opt for a 20-25 minute bike ride than getting on a crowded bus. And there is a basket on the front of the bike for briefcases, handbags, etc.
The whole centre of town is changing so much with the electric trams and less traffic. I suppose if I owned a car I’d find it a bit annoying . . .
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They’ve just introduced a similar scheme in Paris, called velib (velo libre) which I expect I’ll be making use of. They seemed incredibly popular when I was there a week or so ago.
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I think it’s a really neat idea, and it’s obviously catching on. I haven’t been on a bike for about 25 years, so it’ll probably feel a bit odd at first, but it will extend the range of our peregrinations.
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He means places where we stop for a cold beer…
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Soooooo disappointing!!!
On Monday I got my membership card from Sevici in the post, making me eligible to start taking out bikes. We thought Nog’s should have arrived at the same time but today (Wednesday) I called to check.
Nope. No record of Nog’s application. They tried to tell me that his must have got lost in the mail – EXCEPT – we’d sent both applications in the same envelope.
A couple of hours later I got a phone call saying they would be issuing Nog’s card on Thursday (as tomorrow is a public holiday) and he should have it by Monday.
Well dang! We were really hoping to get out on the bikes tomorrow, as it’s a holiday and there’ll be fuck all else to do.
But now we have to wait until next week and also lose another weekend opportunity to go cycling while we’re on holiday. 😦
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