The city of Vienna, a member of the "Cities for Cyclists" network, pioneers in intermodality. Vienna now informs passengers of trams and busses in real time about the availability of bikes at Citybike stations, the Viennese bike sharing program.

The network of Citybike stations has grown rapidly in the recent years, and currently counts 121 stations and 1.500 bikes. Vienna's Citybikes are extremely popular: the bikes were used over a million times in 2015 and at peak times on certain stations there are only a few bikes left. In order to enhance user friendliness and intermodality, the Citybike docking stations are now linked with public transportation. Via an information screen in buses (run by the company INFOSCREEN), passengers are automatically informed about the current availability of bikes at the next stop. 

Smart cities need smart ideas

The service was introduced in August for testing and is now in use since September. As the combination of different uses of transportation gets more and more popular in Vienna, the info screen also shows transfer possibilities to other lines for each stop. The availability of Citybikes can also be checked with a smartphone app. The collaboration between the public transport operator (Wiener Linien), Citybike and INFOSCREEN sets a new trend for smart cities that public transport and bike sharing programs can complement each other.