Prague Extends Free Bike Sharing Option for Lítačka Holders for 4 Years

On 11 October 2021, the city of Prague launched a pilot project offering free use of shared bikes to holders of the Lítačka pass, Prague’s electronic public transport card.

The bikes can be used within the city for 15-minute time periods up to two times a day.

To date, 23,000 people have benefited from free bike rental, making almost 343,000 trips. Thanks to the high demand, the authorities decided to extend the service for another four years.

To rent a bike, one must first download the mobile application of the shared bike service provider. Then, they must link it to their regional transport system (Lítačka) account.

Once this is done successfully, the bike-sharing system will allow the individual to use the service free of charge for 15 minutes.

The Director of Prague Integrated Transport Petr Tomčík commented: “By combining these two sustainable modes of transport in Prague, we want to motivate people to use public transport even more and offer them an even more comfortable and faster way of travel.”

Both Rekola and Nextbike also expressed their delight with the new project, noting that bike-sharing should not be viewed as a competitor to public transport. Tomáš Karpov from Nextbike went further, stressing that smart cities use bike-sharing to make transport more efficient.

Detailed instructions on activating the Lítačka card for bike rental and answers to the most frequent questions can be found here.

Several cities across Europe have successfully integrated (shared) bikes, both e-bikes and conventional ones, into the offer of transport services.