City Series: Guadalajara

PBSC Urban Solutions
3 min readJan 18, 2021

Welcome to the PBSC City Series, our original content covering different cities around the world that partner with us for their shared micromobility needs. Join us as we deep dive into how our technology and innovation has empowered the success of their bike-sharing systems.

Celebrating its sixth anniversary, PBSC’s sustainable bike-share solution in Guadalajara, Mexico has become part of the pulse of this vibrant, forward-thinking city. Operated by BKT bici pública, the successful system — called MiBici — confirms the passion and openness of Guadalajara’s locals towards this healthy, efficient and eco-friendly form of micromobility, as well as PBSC’s excitement about creating and customizing urban bike-sharing solutions for each city’s unique needs and infrastructure. A true urban mobility city, Guadalajara recently built more than 113 kilometers of new bike lanes!

Resonating with culture, this modern capital of the State of Jalisco is known for its international tech industries and stands out as a global research and development centre of new technologies. (It’s also full of history and is where tequila and mariachi were born.)

Guadalajara holds the distinction of being Mexico’s second-biggest city, and tenth-largest in all of Latin America; about 5 million locals reside within its metropolitan area. In fact, Guadalajara’s forward-looking population was a perfect fit for the State of Jalisco to ask PBSC to put in place a bike-sharing system that would bring citizens a sustainable, innovative alternative to urban mobility, in harmony with the city’s existing mobility plan.

In December 2014, MiBici’s launch introduced to Guadalajara’s downtown area a fleet of 1276 robust, comfy ICONIC bikes and 122 Smart Stations. Five years later, with 2925 ICONIC bikes in circulation, the system has grown to operate in three municipalities of this thriving Mexican metropolis: Guadalajara, Zapopan and Tlaquepaque.

MiBici also consists of 280 Smart Stations, strategically placed in different areas of the city to improve the fluidity and flow of commuters. These multipurpose, solar-powered Smart Stations are theft-proof, securing bikes and protecting them from vandalism. BKT bici pública benefits from real-time information transmitted by the Smart Stations to manage the system and monitor usage trends. This data helps balance the fleet and stock up those Smart Stations with less or more bikes at different times, depending on need and other operational factors.

In 2019, Agencia Metropolitana de Infraestructura para la Movilidad (AMIM), which takes care of the MiBici system, aligned with the creative framework behind Guadalajara’s new transit branding. And MiBici got a fresh new design, too! Defined by its green and yellow colours, explains BKT bici pública, this beautiful branding (called MiMovilidad) integrates all the city’s transit, which also includes the BRT (Macrobus) and electric train (Tren ligero). This update also added 479 ICONIC bikes to the network, and a new electronic payment system with a unified smart transit card.

In 2021, another expansion (the system’s 5th!) will unleash 275 FIT bikes and 25 Smart Stations into the system — always integrated with the city’s transport networks. New features coming soon will include a new QR code to rent bikes, revamped app, and website!

So far, it’s worked like a charm. With 92,000 registrations, residents and tourists have used the system for 15 million bike rides — averaging a rate of 5.5 rides a day per bike. A steadily growing number of happy users and the fleet’s timeless sustainability are living proof that PBSC’s bikes are perfect for Guadalajara’s picturesque streets.

Indeed, skillful management of operations has assured this system’s success. The future of bike sharing in Mexico shows great promise, and PBSC ‘s customized, sustainable solutions are there to meet the urban micromobility needs of this modern country and discover its exciting potential to embrace the bike-sharing movement in its dynamic cities!

Discover what makes PBSC’s technology so powerful

PBSC’s advanced, user-friendly technology is built in-house. In addition to our bikes and Smart Stations, we offer an app for users, management system for operators, and much more.

--

--

PBSC Urban Solutions

We work with cities all over the 🌎 to provide innovative, reliable and secure public bike-share solutions. 🚲 MTL, LDN, BCN, RIO, Dubai+++