New contract with subsidies Bike rental will soon cost Bern millions in taxpayers' money
Until now, Publibike's bike rental system has been free of charge for the city of Bern. In future, the provider will receive 440,000 francs a year in public subsidies. Not everyone likes that.
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- The city of Bern wants to expand its bike rental system into the densest urban network in the country.
- The subscriptions are to become cheaper and the service and technology better. 14 agglomeration municipalities will be integrated into the system.
- The new contract with the provider Publibike will cost the city CHF 440,000 per year. Previously, the service was free of charge for the municipality.
Bern is proud of its rental bikes. Last year alone, the population used the Publibike service for more than 1.7 million journeys. The city benefits from the fact that it does not incur any costs for the bike rental service: Operation, logistics and maintenance - Publibike has so far taken care of all of this itself.
So it is hardly surprising that the bike rental service is to be expanded. New stations, more bikes, better equipment, cheaper subscriptions and the integration of additional agglo municipalities into the rental system: from 2026, the "Velo Region Bern" is to be created, in which the cheapest annual subscription will cost just CHF 69 instead of the current CHF 99.
However, the expansion has its price, as the "Berner Zeitung" reports. From the start of the new service contract, Publibike will receive annual operating contributions of 440,000 francs from the city. Over the eight-year term of the contract, the total public subsidies will amount to around 3.5 million francs.
In addition, there are further millions for the expansion of the network and the stations. In total, the city is planning a loan of 7.6 million francs, which will be put to the vote on February 9.
FDP speaks out against bike loan
It is surprising that Publibike can only operate with subsidies. The provider was launched in 2018 with the promise that it would manage without financial aid in the long term. FDP National Councillor Christian Wasserfallen from the city of Berne then also spoke out against the million-euro loan. Bike rental is not an indispensable service.
The politician is offended by the fact that "the rules of the game are suddenly being changed". "It is not the state's job to co-finance a bike rental service".
Bern's transport director Matthias Aebischer (SP) takes a different view. For the former chairman of the lobby organization Pro Velo Schweiz, the service is an "important piece of the puzzle for promoting sustainable transport".
Bern's rental bike network to be upgraded
Bern is not the first municipality to subsidize bike rental with a contribution margin. In Zurich, Publibike receives almost one million francs a year from the city treasury.
With the subsidized new contract, the "Velo Region Bern" should have the densest urban bike rental network in the future. Around 1,000 additional bikes are to be purchased and the proportion of e-bikes in the fleet is to increase from 50% today to 70%. In addition, the batteries should not only last for 50 kilometers in the future, but also enable twice as long trips.
A total of 14 suburbs want to join in. In addition to agglomeration municipalities such as Köniz and Ittigen, which are already connected to the system, peripheral municipalities such as Vechigen and Kehrsatz are also prepared to invest taxpayers' money in order to use the service, according to the Berner Zeitung.
