The Smart City has done its ground work for the environment-friendly Public Bicycle Sharing (PBS) system, in which there will be 1,200 cycles and 120 cycle docking stations across the city.
While the city will be divided into four major zones i.e. educational institutions, heritage district, central business district and residential colonies, the BDA, the BMC and the Bhubaneswar Smart City limited (BSCl) will implement the cycle sharing project and the World Resource Institute (WRI) and the Bhubaneswar Urban Knowledge Centre will be knowledge partners for the same to make the city more greener and less burdened with carbon emissions.
Expert in PBS system, Ivan De la lanza from Mexico, a well-known authority on the system, during his talk at the Third Bhubaneswar Urban lecture Series, spoke about different business models of PBS, currently in practice, around the world.
Other experts from WRI and BUKC and senior officials from the BDA, the BMC, the BSCl, the Bhubaneswar Puri Transport Services limited, engineers, planners and other domain experts took part in the discussion and devised the path as to how to go about for the project and provide basic infrastructure and technical know-how for the city-based cycle sharing venture.
The city would have 120 km of complete street, which will have proper dedicated lanes/tracks for the bicycles. However, the existing cycle tracks developed by Public Works Department will also be used on priority to keep the process going during the initial phase. The proposed Common Payment Card under the Smart City Proposal could be used along with the conventional cash-based transactions for the sharing of the cycles and one need not come back to the starting point to return the cycle.
Azra Khan of WRI (India) in her presentation said, “The operating cost incurred by the service provider would be partly subsidised by the State Government. The operating revenue, however, will come from users, advertisement revenue from the rented space at the docking stations and annual cycle events by the operator/s. However, the sponsorship rights will remain with the Government.”
She also informed that for the Bhubaneswar model, while the minimum distance between two docking stations has been kept as 500 metres, in one square km area there would be eight stations and coverage area of a zone will be around 15 sqkm.
The docking stations are planned to be placed in locations next to existing bus stops and all the locations have sufficient space availability. Importance will also be given to place stations near the commercial, cultural, educational, administrative, and residential and tourist destinations in the first phase.