In a bid to promote non-motorised transport in the city, 500 smart public bicycles and 50 docking stations will be launched soon under the ‘Smart City’ project in Gwalior.
“Initially, 50 docking stations and 500 smart cycles will be available under the scheme. A person would be able to hire a smart cycle from one station and leave it at another station,” said Rahul Jain, collector of Gwalior and chairman of Gwalior Smart City Development Corporation Limited (GSCDC).
The multi-geared bicycles will be GPS enabled and can be taken from the docking station with a smart card. Constant monitoring of cycles will be done through GPS at the control room.
“Cycles can be hired by payment through app, smart-card, logging-pin or mobile phone. Low fares will also promote cycling in the city,” said MahipTejaswi, CEO of GSCDC.
Implementing the ‘public bike sharing’ (PBS) scheme will boost efforts to remove the tag of India’s most polluted city from Gwalior as per the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) report.
Officials of the Gwalior Smart City project are hoping to unveil the PBS project by the end of March. Gwalior will become the second city of the state after Bhopal where the PBS project is to be implemented. It was started in Bhopal last year.
According to Vinod Sharma, Commissioner, Gwalior Municipal Corporation and secretary of GSCDCL, the aim of the project is to “promote a bike culture” in the congested city where public transport, private vehicles and commercial vehicles clog the roads.
Under the project, registered users will be able to use the facility for a fee by picking up and dropping off bicycles at any of the 50 docking stations. A central control room will monitor the availability of bicycles and distribution vans will move them from one station to another to ensure availability.”To begin with, a red-painted, sufficiently wide and around 5-6 km long cycling track will be constructed. It would be extended in the second phase,” Sharma said.