The City bike system in Turku managed during the first year to establish its brand and to promote sustainable mobility of people throughout the year. The city residents named the Föli bikes by the name ‘fölläri’ and gave them a good grade. Most of the users praised the Föli bikes.

Further information on the home page of the Föli city bikes: foli.fi/en/citybikes

The system of Föli city bikes has been realized as a part of an international EU-funded project CIVITAS ECCENTRIC which promotes smart and clean mobility in the city. The Föli city bikes also form part of the city’s spearhead project Smart and Wise Turku.

- Föli bikes are an excellent and visible means of travel which completes the public transport services provided by the City of Turku. Besides, the Föli bikes form in an exemplary way part of the strategic goals of the city of sustainable growth and becoming carbon neutral by the year 2029 says Sirpa Korte, Service Manager of Regional Public Transport.

It is well known that cycling does not cause direct carbon dioxide emissions, and the Föli bikes have also managed to reduce urban car use. 25 % of the respondents of the Föli bike survey say that they use less of their own car thanks to the Föli bikes. According to the results of the survey, the users of the Föli bikes also commented that they feel generally more ecological and more vigorous.

- 90 % of Turku residents live within a 30 minutes biking distance from the Market Square which means that the conditions for sustainable mobility are excellent, states Stella Aaltonen, Site Manager of CIVITAS ECCENTRIC of the City of Turku.

Eco-friendliness has also been considered in the work of the Föli bike service team as the cars used to transfer the vehicles are powered by biogas.

The bike for the whole city

The system of Turku city bikes consists of 300 bikes and of 39 city bike stations. The network of the city bike stations extends from the Kupittaa area over the city centre until the Port of Turku. Two of the stations are POP-UP-stations which test new future station locations and two others are owned by companies.

Heatmap indicates which are the most popular Föli city bike stations.

By 30 April 2019, there were 246,000 trips made using the Föli city bikes, which means about 820 trips by bike. The system was used most right after establishing the system in May 2018 when 30,077 trips were made.

The most popular access right was the access right for one day for which more than 6,620 units were sold. One day’s access rights were sold especially in July which tells that city bikes were popular also among tourists and vacationers. There were 1,093 access rights sold for one week and 2,169 sold for one year.

- The sale of the yearly access rights remained below the target even if the price of the one year’s access right costs only about 3 euros per month which makes it the most cost-effective for the user. With the yearly fee of 40 € you can ride the Föli city bike throughout the year without the need to care for the maintenance of the bike nor for changing studded tyres for the winter, says Stella Aaltonen.

The total cost of the first year of the Turku city bike system was 789,473 €. The share of the City of Turku of the net cost was 221,337 €. The project CIVITAS ECCENTRIC covered 276 500 € of the total cost. The rest was covered with the revenue of the usage rights, the sponsoring and the marketing.