A shared bicycle is often seen as a single bike at a dock or kerb, but the European scale is much larger. The Cycling Counts study examined European Union cities with more than 150,000 residents. Bike-sharing systems operate in 71% of those cities and together provide more than 300,000 shared bicycles.
About 42% of that fleet is electric. People make more than 200 million trips on shared bikes each year. That is roughly one percent of all cycling trips across the EU, a modest share overall. In some countries with lower cycling rates, however, bike sharing accounts for almost five percent of cycling trips.
The figures show why bike sharing is more than a convenience for visitors. It lets people make a short trip without storing and maintaining their own bicycle and can link parts of an everyday journey. The study also highlights a useful distinction: the presence of a fleet is not the same as its use, so bike numbers should be considered alongside trips actually made.