Bike sharing has become an increasingly popular activity in Bucharest. I'Velo's bike sharing centers saw as many as 15,000 people using their bikes in the first week of August across Romania. Half of the users for I'Velo's free bikes were from Bucharest. Iasi and Cluj – Napoca followed with over 2,000 free rentals each during the first week of August. Constanta came among last, with a bit over 1,000 rentals and, Targu Mures, with just below 800.  The last week of July had brought 17,000 free rentals for I'Velo across Romania.

I'Velo, the free biking sharing service, was opened in May this year and had over 100,000 users already. This is the first free bike-sharing service in Romania, joining a number of others which are however available as paid services. The I'Velo project was started by Green Revolution, in partnership with the Bucharest municipality, Raiffeisen Bank,  the Environment Ministry and the city halls of other Romanian cities.

In Bucharest, free bikes are available in Herastrau park, Tineretului and Izvor parks.

The bike-sharing program will be opened until the beginning of October. Bikes are rented based on an ID card, for maximum two hours, from 10,00 to 22,00 hours every day, including week-ends.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Sharable Bicycles - Social Bicycles Bike Sharing System Powered by an iPhone App to Hit NYC (VIDEO) (trendhunter.com)
• Why small-scale bike sharing won't work (blogs.reuters.com)
• Bike Nerds To Create a Low Cost Bike Sharing System For New York (techcrunch.com)
• Taking bike sharing to a new level: the tech behind Social Bikes (arstechnica.com)