Madrid's public bicycle system losing air

The company which runs the public bicycle hire service here is on the verge of bankruptcy less than a year and a half after being launched by former Mayor, Ana Botella.

Bonopark, the concession holder for BiciMAD is losing around 300,000 euros (around 333,000 U.S. dollars) a month and has recently asked the new city administrators for compensation for its losses.

BiciMAD began operations with 1,560 electric bicycles positioned at 123 docking points, the majority of which are in and around the city center.

However, it has been dogged with technical problems from the start with numerous complaints about the difficulty in making payments and recovering deposits. Meanwhile, vandalism has also been a problem and is one reason why Bonopark has not been able to meet contractual obligations to increase the number of bicycles on the streets to 2,029.

Some bicycles have been recovered after being seen in the Manzanares River, which runs through Madrid, while others have appeared for sale on a Romanian website.

As many as 1,625 acts of vandalism have also been registered at the docking points, taking the bicycles temporarily out of use and there have been over 100 trials for attacks against the service, the majority of which have been carried out by young people.

Bonopark's contract saw the company receive 25 million euros to run the service for 10 years.

"We are pressuring them but only to a certain point. We can't be left with this burden on the city's hands. We need to find the best possible solution," Jose Antonio Diaz Lazaro-Carrasco of the 'Ahora Madrid' ruling coalition in the capital told El Pais newspaper, adding that if the city was forced into taking over the service, "it will do so."

BiciMAD currently has over 60,000 registered users, who made 372,600 trips last month with users giving the system a satisfaction rating of 6.92 out of 10. Endit