German Call a Bike: Expansion

BERLIN, Germany – Germany’s pioneering bike rental system Call a Bike, a subsidiary of DB Rent (a subsidiary of German Railway), announced at the 2008 season opening interesting expansion plans. Call a Bike will send out it a rental bike fleet in Berlin, Frankfurt/Main, Munich, Cologne, Stuttgart and Karlsruhe. A first-time debut will be celebrated in Hamburg.

With the start in Hamburg DB Rent announced a long-awaited expansion plan: by the year of 2009 they plan to establish Call a Bike at 100 major ICE (the German bullet train) train stations. Five to 20 rental bikes will stand at each rental station. Approximately an additional 1,000 rental bicycles will ready for rides. DB Rent sees its bike rental system as “an easy to handle possibility to close a further line in the people’s urban mobility chain”.

Within summer 2007 Call a Bike will start in Hanover, Düsseldorf, Leipzig, Dresden, Halle/Saale and Bonn. Until end of 2009 the planned strategic expansion should be finalized. According to industry observers DB Rent is in a rush after several young and large rental bike systems are popping up like in Paris and Lyon.

In season 2007 alone Call a Bike counted a 50 percent customer increase. All in all the number of active Call a Bike users increased from 45,000 to around 68,000. According to DB Rent “Call a Bike customers are mainly between 18 and 35 years old and users of the urban public transportation network”.