Croatian bike-sharing system is coming to Sarajevo very soon.
Nextbike Croatia is celebrating its birthday. It is a bike-sharing system which was started three years ago in Zagreb, reports Poslovni.hr on May 15, 2016.
Krešimir Dvorski, the company director, recalled the humble beginnings with only six stations of public bicycles in Zagreb. “In the first three years, we have reached the figure of 9,000 registered users who have logged more than 300,000 kilometres and spared the environment almost 100 tons of CO2 emissions”, said Dvorski. “Due to such contribution in the field of environmental protection, Croatian Employers’ Association for the second time in a row awarded the company an award for corporate social responsibility”, continued Dvorski and stressed that their next aim was to become the leading system of bicycle sharing in Southeast Europe. Nextbike Croatia is supported by numerous partners including the City of Zagreb, Croatian Railways, the Fund for Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency, and a number of local companies.
And now, the Nextbike system is expanding. “By mid-summer, the Nextbike system will be present in as many as 12 cities in Croatia, and the first new city will be Zadar, staring on 20 May. The first step in the international expansion will follow on 31 May in Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, said Dvorski.
Although the Zagreb City Council, after a three-year pilot project, recently declared that the public bicycles sharing system would be a city-led activity, Dvorski believes that the City will continue to provide adequate support to the further development of this most popular form of sustainable mobility. “We could have as many as 100,000 new users, if the network of stations could be expanded to at least 50 locations throughout Zagreb. This should be accompanied by the improvement of cycling infrastructure as a necessary precondition for the mass use of bicycles as a means of transportation.”
We believe that the City of Zagreb will see the results of the pilot project and will, in addition to giving us access to public areas, provide us with adequate financial support. This would ensure the further development of the system to the satisfaction of all existing and future users”, concluded Dvorski.
