The world of bike-sharing is focused on dockless solutions, as the news feed is quite huge, and the picture of actors, rules, and so on is changing everyday. But dock-based projects are not dead… at all!

In this category, PBSC Urban Solutions seems to have taken the lead in 2018, by contracting with many iconic cities around the globe:

How to better enter the Continental European market (PBSC already operates in Reykjavik, Iceland, since 2017) than with Barcelona?? PBSC, who was fighting in this tender with Bonopark, Smoove, Hourbike, Clear Channel and NextBike, earned a major contract with 7000 bikes, to take over Clear Channel to supply and operate the Bicing program, one of the most successful in Europe. Next on the list, France, where Valence – Romans Déplacements chose the company to operate 270 bikes, taking over Smoove this time, from fall 2018.

But the biggest victories for PBSC happened in South America. Its partnership with the brazilian operator Tembici opened many doors to allow the Canadian provider to conquer almost all of the South American main cities: in just over 7 months, they opened services in  the Brazilian cities of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Recife, Salvador, Porto Alegre and Vila Velha, for a total of 8000 bikes! PBSC and Tembici recently announced having signed with Santiago, Chile for 3850 bike, while 4000 bikes will hit the streets of Buenos Aires!

Many other companies followed suite such as Smoove in Paris (FRA, not without difficulties but things seems to get better) and Espoo (FIN) or Nextbike, in many Western Europe cities, Las Palmas (SPA) or Cardiff (WAL). The future is not only about free-floating as cities are still willing to develop station-based bike- sharing systems, more secured and controllable and analysts agree to state that station-based have a bright future within the next 5 years.