Power in the pedals

By Mohamed Moussa and Ayman Roushdy

Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouli attended Thursday the inauguration ceremony of phase one of the Cairo Bike Project in Downtown Cairo.

Cairo Governor Khaled Abdel Aal was also present at the ceremony. The Cairo Bike Project, which is aimed at reducing harmful gas emissions, was launched ahead of the 27th UN Conference of Parties on Climate Change (COP27) that will be held in Sharm el-Sheikh in November. The project is being implemented by the Cairo governorate in partnership with UN-Habitat and Swiss non-profit Drosos Foundation, with technical support and supervision by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).

“Cairo will be the pioneer in implementing this project, as this system is the first of its kind in Egypt, given that previous experiments were confined to closed urban communities,” the premier said during the opening.

For the first phase of the project, 250 bicycles will be distributed to 26 stations.

Users can use a mobile application or prepaid smart cards to rent a machine for LE1 per hour and LE8 for the whole day. All bikes are fitted with a GPS tracker.

The hourly value for secondary and university students is 70 piastres per hour and a maximum of 8 pounds per day. While the subscription price will be 600 pounds annually and it will be reduced to 400 pounds for students of high schools.

The project will be implemented in Downtown Cairo, Garden City and Zamalek areas, and includes 500 GPS-tracked bikes distributed over 45 solar-powered stations and secured with surveillance cameras in strategic places that integrate with metro stations and public transport lines, and its deployment in other places will also be studied.

“It is a project that aims to encourage the use of bicycles as an alternative means of transport,” Cairo Governor Khaled Abdel Aal said.

“It is also the first bike-sharing system to be implemented by the government in Egypt,” he added.

Five bicycle stations have been set up for the pilot scheme at Tahrir, Mohamed Farid, Abdel-Moneim Riyad Squares, el-Falaki and Abdel-Khaleq Tharwat streets in downtown Cairo.