Despite the excellent public transport system, terrible motorists and the fact that it always rains during the week of the Milan furniture fair, one of the best ways to get around and see the city is by pushbike. Being a cyclophile of sorts, during the 9 or 10 years that I have been coming regularly to the fair, I have experimented with almost every means of gaining access to two wheels. I have brought my own from the UK, bought one in the excellent Sunday flea market, borrowed one from the person I was staying with and rented one from a temporary pop-up service. This year, however, the cycling tourist has a whole new option – the bikemi service. Banks of shiny new bright yellow bikes have appeared all over the city, in their hundreds, all locked to a rail in neat lines. Access to the service is through one of the ATM kiosks, by phone or online, and is a simple matter of signing your life away via your credit card. I did so online, and was riding around minutes later.
The bikes themselves, despite the Noddy-like plastic appendages, are very well built, fun and easy to ride. With shaft drive and 3 hub gears, there is not too much to go wrong, and all the ones I tried worked perfectly, even the lights. Whether this is still the case in 6 months time remains to be seen.
My tip for anyone attempting to cycle in Milan: get a map. Not the one they give you at the airport, nor the exercise in poor information design that is the Interni guide, but a proper one, with the bus and tram lines on it. Then work out your route to avoid these wherever possible. Tram tracks are not your friend on two wheels of any sort, and nor are the giant slippery cobble stones on which they are invariably laid.
Similar schemes also operate in Barcelona and Paris, and I understand that we may be getting one in London. Sadly I can’t see the more delicate parts of the bikes or infrastructure standing up very well to vandalism. I can’t imagine, either, where there would be space for the long parking rails, given how stingy most councils seem to be about cycle parking in general. Out of the many free, or public, bike services that have I’ve seen though, this one does appear to have the right mix of hardware and technology, and has been implemented on a scale big enough to make it feasible and convenient.
