Education City pioneers electric-bike sharing system

Electric bikes (e-bike) will start rolling at Education City this month to provide staff and students at Qatar Foundation (QF) with eco-friendly transport service from one university premise to another, QF Telegraph has reported.

While promoting a healthy lifestyle within the QF community, the e-bike system will also help reduce carbon emissions by using battery-powered bicycles, said the weekly publication.

“This is the first bicycle sharing project in the world using system batteries,” said Ibrahim al-Haidos, MEP engineer, Capital Projects.

“Similar systems are based on traditional bikes but we chose batteries because they provide additional impetus to the user and increase the speed of bikes,” he explained. “This system gives the user special advantages in the summer.”

He said QF planned to bring at least 60 units initially but more e-bikes would roll on in the next phases of the project and once the system was fully activated.

The e-bikes can be used within a designated path covering an 8-km distance which consists of 19 stations at Education City.

Al-Haidos noted that the locations of the stations had been selected based on their proximity to the gate of buildings to encourage students and staff to use the service.

QF community members can use the e-bikes after registering and passing a cycling test at special centres, which will be set up across Education City.

QF staff and students can get and park the bikes from any of the stations using a smart card, which will record the name of the person, the distance covered, the date and time of usage.

E-bikes will also be programmed with a special security system that will determine the extent of their use.

He said the system could monitor the geographical scope of the bikes through a special control room to ensure their use is only within the limits of Education City.

The engineer added that they could also check the batteries and performance of the e-bikes using the same system, making maintenance of each unit easier.