700 bicycles to appear on Turku’s streets this spring

The public transport company Föli is inviting residents to assign unique names to the new city bikes

In a few months, city bikes will return to the streets of Turku and become part of the public transport system. This was announced earlier this week by the public transport company Föli, which reported that 700 bicycles and 70 stations will appear on the Finnish city’s streets at the turn of May-June.

Improving and expanding the network

According to Föli, last year’s bicycle network proved to be too small and faulty as there were numerous technical challenges that could not be resolved. For this reason, it has signed an agreement with a new supplier, the Danish Donkey Republic.

In addition to supplying more bicycles, the new company will also make using the city bikes easier than before. That is, one will now be able to rent a bicycle through a mobile application, which will allow the electric tire locks to open and close.

“In the old city bike system, the customer had to log in as a user of the system in the online service in order to use the bike. It was an effort and presumably raised the threshold to try the service. The fact that the new system can be used with an application is a big improvement and I believe it will attract new users to try out the city bikes,” shared Transport Services Manager Tisto Peltonen.

This year, the biking season will last until the end of October although the City of Turku is also planning on launching a winter season in the future. The cost of renting a bike will depend on the amount of time cyclists spend using the service

It is interesting to note that each of the 700 new bikes will have its own unique name. What is more, Turku’s residents will have the chance to submit their name proposals on Foli’s website until 3 April.