The Oeiras Council is preparing to launch a municipal bike-sharing network. It will be called Oeiras Move, the municipality's mobility brand, and will be managed by Parques Tejo, the "EMEL of Oeiras". In a pilot phase, it will have stations and bicycles along the Business Cycle Path between Paço de Arcos and Porto Salvo.
In the second half of 2023, Oeiras will have a municipal bike-sharing network along the designated Business Cycle Pathbetween Paço de Arcos and Porto Salvo. The system will be managed by Parques Tejo, the "EMEL of Oeiras", and will operate under the Oeiras Move.
Completed in 2021, the Corporate Cycle path connects the Paço de Arcos train station to Taguspark, passing through the Quinta da Fonte business center and Lagoas Park, with a mix of segregated routes and others shared with pedestrians. The bike path project was already planned with the future installation of a shared bike system along this axis, having been nine seasons proposalstwo next to the railway stationone in the Upper Lobatwo in the Paço de Arcos Roadtwo in the Farm of the Sourceone next to the hotel Holiday Inn and one last station near the EB1+JI Porto Salvo.
Whether the planned stations will remain in these locations is not yet known, but Parques Tejo told Lisboa Para Pessoas that on the Business Cycle path they will place five stations and 20 bicycles along the Ciclovia Empresarial (Business Bicycle Path), with other six stations and 30 more bicycles reserved for the Medrosa Cycle path - which is still under construction and which will connect the Oeiras train station to Torre Beach, passing right next to NOVA University, in Carcavelos -, and near other beaches in the municipality. Parques Tejo also foresees more bicycles to guarantee operations.
Information from the municipality reports that the long-term plan is to have 300 bikes and 30 stations strategically located in the county, covering historical centers, business hubs, schools, shopping areas, beaches, and transportation interfaces.
The installation of the stations started at the Enterprise Cycle Path, where the Oeiras City Hall and Parques Tejo intend to launch the municipal network, with at least one station already installed at the end of the mentioned cycle corridor, near a residential area in Porto Salvo, as Lisboa Para Pessoas was able to see on site.
CME's Portuguese-French solution
The Oeiras shared system will be a pilot project which will be coordinated by the municipal company Parques Tejo, which also manages the municipality's parking lot. The brand Oeiras Move will be used in this new service; it is a brand that was launched at the end of 2022 and that already names the shared scooter drop-off points of the three private operators present in the territory: Bolt, Bird and Link.
For this pilot, the bicycles and docks will be provided by CMEwhich was selected last year through prior consultation. The contract, which includes the cession of the entire solution, from the equipment and vehicles to the technological infrastructure, is located at 74.1 thousand eurosto which should be added another 70 thousand euros for the development of the "backoffice and API services" that will allow everything to work in an integrated way and under the Oeiras Move platform.
According to available information, the bicycle sharing solution of CME - a Portuguese company that is best known for its technical installations of water, sewage and telecommunications in the street - results from a collaboration with the French companies B2eBike e OOWI. A solution that CME offers includes the supply and installation of electric bicycles, stations with docks for the automatic charging of the batteries of these bicycles, as well as the technological management of the system, all the logistic operation (redistribution of the bicycles to the network stations, equipment maintenance, etc) and also monitoring work (real time data, usage reports, etc)..
The shared bicycles of the CME system have a city look, 26" wheel, electric motor, saddle adjustable to the users' height, LCD screen to display the charge battery, speed, kilometers traveled, and travel time, front basket open and fixed to the frame, side stand, integrated GPS to allow real time location of the bicycle, 4G communication, unlocking through mobile application, and autonomy of 50 km. The CME stations are modular, allowing the addition or removal of docks depending on the parking capacity to be offered in a given location and on the use that is verified in the system. The CME solution allows for automatic communication of the occupancy and charging status of the bicycle batteries, and guarantees the possibility of creating virtual docks in situations where the station is full and the user is unable to return the bicycle, or in other situations. It is also given the possibility of remote unlocking of the bicycles for emergency situations, for example.
Regulation under construction
Although these are the characteristics of the CME solution, it is not yet known how the Oeiras municipal network will work concretelyThe solution adopted in the field may not reflect all the possibilities of the supplying company. What is certain is that the Oeiras system will work through the new mobile application Oeiras Movewhich will be launched for iOS and Android and, besides bike sharing, will add other Parques Tejo services such as car parking payment.
In the context of the launching of its municipal bike-sharing network, the Oeiras Council has begun to prepare the regulation that will define the rules and conducts for the use of this system. All interested parties can, since April 5th, send their contributions to this "Regulation of the Shared-use Bicycle Network of the Oeiras Municipality by sending an e-mail to geral@oeiras.pt mentioning your interest in this procedure, your full name, CC number, and your postal address (or headquarters address in the case of collective entities such as companies, associations, or cooperatives).
More than 36,000 trips on scooter
In November 2022, the municipality of Oeiras opened up to soft mobility shared services from private companies, namely Bolt, Bird and Link scooters. About 200 sharing points have been created in the municipality where these scooters can be picked up or dropped off, with more to follow this year.
In the first month (from November 9th to December 9th), there were a total of 13,163 trips were recorded, starting in Oeiras, aggregating a total of 23,410 kilometers traveled, at an average of 1.8 km per trip, with an average duration of between 5 and 10 minutes per trip. Already in the first quarter of 2023 (between January 1st and March 31st, 36,712 trips started in Oeiras and 66,074 kilometers were recorded. "These indicators, combined with the observed mobility patterns, allow us to observe that the equipment is used mainly for short trips in urban space", points to Parques Tejo.
The shared bicycle network of the Oeiras municipality will coexist with the private offers of other operators, in an integrated and complementary logic.
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Update at 5:20 pm on 4/20/2023: added additional information from Parques Tejo.
