Barcelona's Shared Bikes Seek Pardon After May Elections

The seven bike-sharing operators are confident they can reverse Collboni's ban after the municipal elections in May. Meanwhile, the City Council maintains that from January 1, there will be no shared bikes beyond Bicing.

The seven companies operating shared bicycles in Barcelona expect to have to store their vehicles in warehouses by the end of the year, but they are already working to resume operations after the municipal elections in May. Their goal is to achieve a pardon from the next municipal government that will overturn the decision made by the mayor, Jaume Collboni, announced on June 4.

The council insists that the measure is unchangeable: from January 1, there will be no shared bicycles on the streets of the city beyond those of Bicing. The municipal government argues that the majority of users of these vehicles are tourists.

Collboni's main argument for banning the service was the impact of poorly parked bikes on public space. According to municipal data, in just a year and a half, the City Council imposed 5,413 fines on these vehicles and the municipal tow truck removed more than 2,000. In July, the number of penalties approached a thousand.

The operators downplay these figures and compare them to the more than 3 million trips made with these vehicles during that period. To correct parking incidents, the seven companies coordinated since late 2025 in a joint monitoring patrol that they reinforced this summer.

The companies managing the service are Bird, Bolt, Cooltra, Donkey Republic, Lime, RideMovi, and Voi, with a total of 3,478 bicycles in the city. Although they collaborate on some initiatives, they also maintain distance. This week, Lime proposed a more restrictive contest that limits the service to two or three operators.

“One of the main reasons that makes the service inefficient in Barcelona is the presence of seven different operators,” argue Lime's institutional relations manager in Barcelona, Joan Salarich, and the director of institutional relations for Lime Iberia, Chloe Clavell.

Lime claims that in the city, the innocent pay for the guilty and that the management of some less-used companies has penalised the image of the rest. The company asserts that 40% of its users are locals.

The other avenue to reverse the decision is political. In July, Junts, Barcelona en Comú, ERC, and PP joined forces to urge the mayor to reconsider the elimination of the service. They labelled the measure as “irresponsible,” contrary to sustainable mobility, and warned that it could overload Bicing, strain the metro and bus services, and encourage the use of private vehicles.

While the future of the service is resolved, the companies are preparing to store their vehicles starting January 1. The final decision will depend on the new municipal government that emerges from the polls in May.