SMOU - Mobility Services

Great concept, poor execution. Not sure how the city is evaluating the effectiveness of this system, but it’s about 50% success, 50% pure frustration. Besides the fact that there aren’t enough bikes available, the bikes that are still in port are all out of commission…and worse, this is not reflected in the app. So you go to a station with 5 available bikes, and they’re ALL out of commission. Then, there’s nothing on the app that allows you to report a malfunctioning bike so it can be repaired. And if you get a broken bike, forget about exchanging it, because there’s a 10 minute waiting period, regardless of the circumstances. I had an accident on a bike once and the pedal broke. So I returned it to a bike port and couldn’t report the issue, nor could I check out another one because of the aforementioned waiting period. Also, no one uses the regular bikes, everyones prefers the electric bikes and they only use the regular ones when there are no electric bikes available since they’re out of commission. It is clearly a popular form of transport, but the maintenance is lacking profoundly. I would rather support a public system like this one than a private company, but the lack of attention to the user base is disheartening. I would much rather have sent this complaint directly to management, but as you can guess, there’s no way to do so. Thus a public complaint is the only way to make my voice heard. In summary, a system in serious need of an upgrade with better ways of communicating with its users.

It’s not currently possible to see which direction I’m facing on the map. This makes it hard to know how to get to a bike station. On multiple occasions I’ve gone the wrong way thinking I was going the right way. The app also takes quite a long time to load compared to other apps like Google maps for example. It’s not fun to stare at a black loading screen while I’m standing and waiting next to a bike I want to rent.

TLDR: If you want to call a foreign city government to get approved for a 5 minute bike ride, 5 stars probably! Pros: tons of bikes Cons: tons of bike because it’s impossible to sign up for the service, but the developer doesn’t think it’s important to notify you of that until you’ve downloaded the app, filled in your details, added your passport, verified your email, and then returned to the app to “activate the bicing service” - at that point you’re told it’s impossible to use a passport to rent bikes and to literally call Barcelona. Call the city of Barcelona and get help (no number provided, as if that would help).