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City bike season ends, usage not back to pre-Covid levels

Short term rentals remain below levels seen before the pandemic.

Kaupunkipyörä
City bike usage has become commonplace in Helsinki. Image: Markku Pitkänen / Yle
  • Yle News

Finland's city bikes go into winter hibernation on 31 October, with Kuopio, Vantaa, Tampere, Espoo and Helsinki all seeing the rental bicycles packed away for the winter.

In the system that covers Helsinki and Espoo, some 50,000 users made 2.8 million journeys. That's about 30 percent down on 2019, the last year unaffected by the pandemic and associated remote working practices.

In Kuopio more than 900,000 kilometres were ridden on the city bikes, with an average of 6.6 journeys per bike per day.

In Helsinki each bike was ridden an average of four times a day, while in Espoo the bikes were checked out twice a day on average.

Each of the four city bike systems offers users the chance to check out a bike to be returned at another docking station in the network.

Pricing ranges from a daily pass to permission to use the bikes for the whole season, which starts in the spring each year. Over the winter the stations and bikes are put into storage and serviced ready for the new season.