Sharing Rides and beyond: the CityBee case
Name of the initiative:Citybee
Organisation form:
Country:Lithuania
Domain: shared mobility
Starting year:2012
Keywords:
CityBee (Prime Leasing, Ltd) – a Lithuanian company, which operates car, vans, bike, and electric scooter sharing services. This company started in 2012 with only five vehicles to share and becomes the pioneering car-sharing service [1]. CityBee has shown a huge growth and reached nearly doubled user base in 2018 and has over 800 cars in Lithuania [2]. In spring of 2019, CityBee has launched a new service – an electric scooter sharing service and was the first company in Baltics countries [3]. The car and van sharing services are organized on the CityBee mobile app. The sign-up process involves a few steps. Firstly, a new customer should provide data about his driver's license and a payment card. Customer can choose from over 1300 diverse types of cars (e.g., electric cars, hybrid cars), 150 vans, 300 bikes, 2000 scooters. Customer pays only for the time and kilometers are driven [1]. The simple sign-up process is used for the bike-sharing and electric scooter-sharing services. For the bike-sharing service, customer should sign up and provide a payment card. The customer can choose the nearest bicycle stop on the app and select a bike and scan its QR code and unlocks a bicycle. Later the bicycle can be parked in the orange CityBee bicycle zone. The same process work within scooter which can be parked in the orange CityBee scooter zone. The price of both bicycle and electric scooter rides consists of a fixed fee (i.e., pay as you go). CityBee can be valuable for both private companies and customers. The main value for companies includes an ability to refuse their own companies' cars and benefit from a convenient transportation service in many cities. While CityBee is a good alternative for one-car families because it enables them to use a car on-demand, save some costs, support community. Importantly, electric cars are quiet and friendly to the environment. This sharing program decreases traffic congestion and improves parking space availability and contributes to eco-friendly living issues in cities. Hence, car, vans, bike, and electric scooter-sharing services enable citizens to save money, choose to develop collaborative consumption, and protect the environment.
Contributed by: Eglė Vaičiukynaitė, Jūratė Banytė, Elena Vitkauskaitė; Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania
Date added: 11 July 2020
