The continuous problems of Bicimad make the leap from the streets of the capital to the Plenary Session of the City Council. Since the new model rolled, on March 7, many users have experienced "anger" and "despair" in the face of "unpredictable chaos": they complain that "there are hardly any bikes available" and that those that exist have almost no battery. There are even those who ask that this service "stop being free" – a measure that will last until July 31 – since the zero cost is what "is destroying" this mobility system.
The main cause of this problem is that many users do not comply with the obligation to park the bicycle in the stations, leaving them at any point such as sidewalks, parks or wastelands, point out from the Consistory. This causes that, for the rest of Madrid, the offer of available units decreases and forces an extraordinary deployment of personnel for the collection of these vehicles.
To try to stop the bleeding, the government team will incorporate another 150 new bicycles to the system, which are added to the 802 already deployed since March 7. In addition, the EMT will suspend the accounts of those citizens who persist in using the system incorrectly. The delegate of the Mobility area of the Consistory, Borja Carabante, has already advanced that those people who leave the bikes lying will receive two emails: the first warning; the second informing them that they have been sanctioned.
Despite this, these measures are insufficient for the opposition groups, which have harshly charged against the management of Councilman Martínez-Almeida. "Bicimad is the clearest example of what has been the management of this mayor: sell what he believes will give him a space without caring about the city or the citizenship," said Mar Espinar, spokesman for the PSOE in the City of Madrid, who said that the councilor must give explanations of "this hasty start-up of 700 bicycles, of which 500 have already disappeared in the first week." And he added that it is the "users and workers" who are suffering the "punishment" because of these decisions.
For its part, the municipal group of Más Madrid will visit the EMT facilities on Wednesday to know the opinion of Bicimad workers about the "conditions of absolute disorder" and will consider asking for political responsibilities.
Cuca Sánchez, deputy spokesperson for this group, reported yesterday that the "experts" have transferred them that it will be "necessary to close for a while" Bicimad so that the service can return to work in a correct way. "The application does not work, it is impossible to take bikes from stations, there are no bikes available, hundreds of new bikes have been lost that the Municipal Transport Company can not find because when the battery runs out the GPS stops working" and can not be located, said Sanchez.
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