Moving Ahead towards ‘Smart City’, Pondicherry soon to operationalize Bicycle-Sharing Scheme

News Bharati    09-Jul-2019
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Pondicherry, July 9: A small island near the east coast of India has come up with an innovative eco-friendly idea of bicycle-sharing in the city. A bicycle-sharing scheme, conceived and prioritized under Puducherry Smart City Development Plan, is to be introduced in a couple of months. 

 
In the city of Pondicherry, 100 spots have been identified for cycle docking stations. The registered users can use bicycles to hope from one place to another within the boulevard area. To begin with, 20 docking stations with 10 to 15 cycles each, are to be set up in place like beach promenade, Bharathi Park, Gandhi Thidal, Aurobindo Ashram and railway station. The bicycles can be left at any of the docking stations after use. 
The current population of the Union Territory is over 11 lakhs and the total number of vehicles on road comes around 9 lakhs. The scheme will be helpful to alleviate the havoc of overcrowd as well as it will be boon to the tourists who throng to Puducherry in thousands whose number swells to several thousand on weekends. 

 
The bicycle-sharing scheme is one among the 22 prioritized schemes of the Puducherry Smart City Project for which about 194 crore rupees would be spent. The project under the public-private partnership model will be operationalized after a sustainable operator is found out through tender. It is said to be a novel scheme suitable to Puducherry where in Boulevard area bus services cannot be run because of narrow streets. 
Here is the detailed report of the scheme: