They land in Cherbourg-en-Cotentin! 500 bicycles and 500 electric scooters will be accessible self-service from this Thursday. The city, which wants to develop this soft mobility, has called on the company Bird as the service operator.
How it works ?
To rent a bike or scooter, you must first have downloaded the Bird app and filled in your method of payment (credit card or PayPal). Then simply scan the QR code of the chosen vehicle to activate it. Here we go !
Where to drive and where to park?
You can drive on all five delegated municipalities of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin (Cherbourg-Octeville, Tourlaville, Équeurdreville-Hainneville, Querqueville and La Glacerie), with the exception of cemeteries and parks. This is the most extensive Bird aircraft circulation zone in France, with Marseille!
Once you have completed your journey, you must park the bike or scooter in a parking area and not outside, otherwise the counter continues to run. There are 155 of them throughout the area, materialized on the ground by a pictogram representing a bicycle and a scooter.
– City of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin
How much does it cost ?
As soon as you unlock a bike or a scooter, you will pay 1€. Added to this is the cost of the time of use, i.e. 14 cents per minute. It is automatically taken from the application. There is also a subscription system.
What road safety measures?
Wearing a helmet is not compulsory, but recommended. You must ride only on the 40 kilometers of city cycle paths or on the roads, but no driving on sidewalks. The municipal police will ensure compliance with the highway code, assures the municipality.
In addition, each bicycle and scooter is geolocated in real time. This also allows them to be controlled remotely. In pedestrian zones, the speed automatically increases to 3 km/h. Outside the zone, the devices stop and otherwise, they cannot exceed 20 km/h in all the city. The goal is to avoid accidents, like the one that claimed the life of a five-and-a-half-year-old boy in Nice last week.
– Chloe Martin
How is the fleet managed?
The Fil & Terre association is responsible for maintaining the 500 bicycles and 500 scooters. It will be able to remotely monitor their battery level and replace them when necessary, the batteries having a range of 40 km.
Thanks to localization, the association will move the bicycles and scooters from one station to another so that they are distributed over all the parking areas. Finally, as this is a one-year experiment, renewable, the town hall reserves the right tostop the system if too many infractions or incivilities are observed.