Stockholm: The next chapter in Urban Sharing’s story

Urban Sharing teams up with UIP Holding and VOI to bring bike sharing back to Stockholm.

UIP Holding and VOI will form a joint venture company that will commission, finance, and operate a seven-year city-wide Stockholm bike share operation. To run the scheme, the joint venture company will utilize technology developed by Urban Sharing.

In 2017, we wrote about our work in our small city with big ideas. Today we’re happy to announce our not-so small sister city Stockholm joins the Urban Sharing roster in our first-ever collaboration with Stockholm’s own VOI.

Very early in our development, we identified the need to integrate into a city’s public infrastructure rather than simply augment it. We learned that taking the time to incorporate data into our micro-mobility planning could create one of the world’s most efficient bike-sharing systems. We found that sharing data with our partners — and anyone else who needs it — creates a collaborative, curious environment that benefits everyone.

Oslo was our laboratory to test out these big ideas. It’s a natural fit. Oslo’s residents invest heavily in public infrastructure and they trust it wholeheartedly. It’s a tech-savvy city that embraces innovation. And the city’s move away from cars is a move towards integrating micro-mobility solutions permanently into the city’s infrastructure.

These ideas resonated and took off. We implemented bike-sharing solutions throughout Norway, into Bergen and Trondheim. Our technology crossed borders for the first time last year with our scheme Edinburgh. Over the next year we’ll expand Urban Sharing’s thoughtful, city-friendly model into a larger share of Scandinavia.

“Urban Sharing’s model depends on a strong relationship with a host city,” says Urban Sharing CTO Johan Hogasen-Hallesby. “Our work in Stockholm will be greatly enhanced by our collaboration with VOI. The Nordic values shared between Urban Sharing and VOI should bolster our relationship for years to come.”

This is a turning point in the Urban Sharing story. We anticipate more and more cities to integrate our solution throughout 2019. And through our collaboration with UIP, VOI, and Stockholm, our small city with big ideas may just have grown a little bigger.