Public Bike Sharing in Chandigarh: Year on, fate of 31 PBS docking stations continues to hang fire

Sandeep Rana

Chandigarh, April 8

For about a year, the fate of 31 docking stations under Public Bike Sharing (PBS) project of Chandigarh Smart City Limited continued to hang fire.

Panjab University had earlier denied permission to set up 17 docking stations on its premises reportedly due to advertisements of educational institutions on these stations. While 14 stations have already been set up on the varsity campus, but these too have to be shifted due to viability issues.

UT Chief Architect was earlier asked to suggest an alternative to all these varsity sites. However, he is yet to decide on all of these, though some of them have been worked out.

So far, 600 docking stations have been set up out of the total planned 617 such stations with 5,000 cycles.

Company officials said on an average 600-700 average rides were daily taken at 600 docking stations in a day. However, vandalism of bikes and network issues at some stations continue to trouble them as well as customers.

An agency official shared that all cycle GPS locks work on 2G SIM, thus at some stations, including Sukhna Lake and Sector 33, the network issues crop up. People find issues in locking and unlocking the bikes. Some of them get it resolved at the customer care, while several leave the bikes hassled.

The Smart City project was started in December 2020 with a pilot phase comprising 250 bicycles and 25 docking stations, followed by Phase I in August 2021 with 1,250 bicycles and 155 docking stations.

The project’s Phase II began in February 2022, with the addition of 1,250 new bicycles to the fleet and 155 more docking stations. As many as 3,750 bicycles are now available at 465 docking stations across the city with the launch of Phase III. The fourth and final launch will have 5,000 cycles at 617 stations that was stuck at present.

Users can pick up a cycle for Rs 10 for half an hour from any of the docking stations, while the charge drops to Rs 5 per half an hour for those with annual membership of Rs 500. The bicycles can be used after registering on the ‘SmartBike’ app.