Offenbach: E-bike rental is now free for 30 minutes

• fromFabian Scheuermann

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The urban e-bike rental in Offenbach is not used very much. As of this week, the pedelecs can now be borrowed free of charge for 30 minutes.

For some years now, you can rent e-bikes and e-cars in six eye-catching stations in Offenbach. But the offer of the Offenbacher Verkehrsbetriebe (OVB) and the Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbunds (RMV) is not yet being used too much. As of this week, the pedelecs can now be borrowed free of charge – a fee is only payable for rentals of 30 minutes or more.

“We want to increase the attractiveness of the use of pedelecs,” explains Offenbach’s Mobility Director Sabine Groß (Greens) the step – because electric cycling is “practical and environmentally friendly”. Anja Georgi, Managing Director in the Mobility business area of ​​Offenbacher Stadtwerke, adds that the RMV “wants to further establish the electric vehicles using the share process”.

That is why there will be a “big information campaign” about the 30 free minutes in Offenbach in the coming weeks. It is also new that the reservation, rental and return of the pedelecs and e-cars were completely via an app. To use the pedelecs, you only need to register once on emobil-rheinmain.de.

At the beginning of the year, the SPD had heavily criticized the city and state-sponsored rental system in Offenbach’s city parliament. The Social Democrats calculated that the public sector subsidized each rental operation in 2018 with around 170 euros – since there were expenses of 250,000 euros, but only 1,369 rental operations. The traffic club Germany (VCD), however, criticized that there are still too few stations.

Upon request, Stadtwerke now states that the offer was received somewhat better in 2019 than in 2018: there were 1704 rental processes last year – the twenty pedelecs were therefore borrowed 784 times and the six electric cars 920 times. There was no answer to the question of how long employees of the city and its subsidiaries have been able to use the offer free of charge.

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