Barcelona will eliminate shared bicycles from January 1st

BarcelonaNot long ago, one of those shared bicycles that many tourists use to get around Barcelona and that they usually park anywhere spent almost 36 hours parked right in Plaça Sant Jaume, in front of City Hall. Perhaps it was then that the mayor, Jaume Collboni, matured the announcement he made this Thursday morning on the microphones of Catalunya Ràdio: the Catalan capital will not renew the licenses with which companies operate this service called bicisharing. On January 1st, therefore, these vehicles will no longer be able to circulate in the city.

"The city must protect public space a lot," defended Collboni, who considers the use of this service a "mess." As the mayor explained, although they have met several times with the companies that manage the service and they have tried to "put some order in," the annoyances caused by this type of vehicle continue to be constant. As an example, some data shared by the City Council: since January of last year, the council has imposed 5,413 fines on the seven companies that manage shared rental bicycles in the city. If we consider that the service currently has 3,478 bikes, we can infer that each vehicle has been fined 1.5 times.

More data. Since the beginning of 2025, the municipal crane has had to remove 2,099 bicycles from the public highway for being poorly parked in places where they obstructed the passage of other residents, such as pedestrian crossings or very narrow sidewalks. In the same period, the City Council has received 4,443 complaints from Barcelona residents about poorly parked shared bicycles. The majority of these complaints are concentrated in the districts with the highest presence of tourists: Ciutat Vella, l'Eixample, and Sant Martí.

Collboni, in fact, has also defended the suppression of these licenses because they harm a "local alternative" such as, he said, the bicycle rental shops in Ciutat Vella and l'Eixample. And he also announced that the City Council will soon announce the expansion of the Bicing offer, its own shared bicycle model. According to municipal sources, the new contract to be negotiated should involve more bikes and more stations.

Expiration of licenses

At the end of 2024, when the City Council awarded the new licenses for shared-use bicycles, it introduced an additional requirement for the awarded companies to control the correct parking of the vehicles. A clause that, despite municipal sources emphasizing that the companies have shown willingness to comply, has not been met. Therefore, when the licenses expire at the end of this year, the seven companies managing the service —Smart Cycles, RideMovi, Cooltra, Boltest TXFY, Lime Technology, Bird Rides Spain, and Voi Technology– will not be renewed.