On October 9^th, Lisbon city has launched a €28.9 million public competition for the implementation of a public bike share system. The announcement, published in the Official Gazette, states that the winner will enjoy a 9 year concession. The “Empresa Municipal de mobilidade e Estacionamento de Lisboa” (Lisbon’s municipal parking & mobility, EMEL) gave a strong push to make the “bike-share operation” start now. So far, Lisbon has been one of the few European capitals where there is still no system of public bike sharing. However, the new mayor of Lisbon Fernando Medina gets his foot in the pedal for change the situation, pushing even more than his predecessors, to put cycling into mobility speeches and actions. During the last year, EMEL team has been studying the functioning of bike share systems around Europe leaning on a persistent and strong local bicycle advocacy work and public participation. According to the Gazette, during this first phase, the proposed system will start with 1.400 bicycles and over 100 stations. Those will cover central city districts in the flat uptown “plataeu” and the principal avenues extending into the downtown core and along the Tagus riverside. There is no further information available about the cost for users of the service. Another example of promotion of Portuguese soft mobility can be found not so far from Lisboa, in Cascais, where the municipality has chosen to revamp its touristic bike-share system into a mobility oriented system. By 2017 the bikeway network is expected to be tripled, and cycling better integrated into the municipal mobility policy.  

Companies which might be interested in running the competition have until November 20^th  to submit proposals. Selection criteria announced (and their weight in the decision-making) are price (50%), experience of bicycle use (30%), functional bicycle components (10%) and image of the public bike share system (10%). The call for tenders is available here, only in Portuguese so far.