Source: Zag Daily

Across Europe, bike-share schemes run by private operators – which predominantly feature e-bikes – saw stronger growth in 2025 than public systems, according to the latest European Shared Mobility Review published by micromobility enablement company Fluctuo.

This is the first time that Fluctuo’s annual report has distinguished between private and public fleets; previously it had focused on the differences between station-based and dockless systems. Fluctuo states that this change “better reflects how the market actually operates.” The data in the report explores a variety of approaches to shared mobility in different countries.

The numbers compared

Private bike share schemes reached a total fleet size in 2025 of 147,000, a rise of 9% on 2024, while ridership saw a substantial leap to 124,000 – a rise of 51%. Although public bike systems saw a fleet size reduction of 9%, the fleet remains much larger at 238,000 vehicles, though the ridership growth was much smaller at 5% to 239 million trips.

The ridership growth achievement in the private schemes comes through improved efficiency; the metric for trips per vehicle per day (TVD) rose from 1.7 to 2.3 for private shared bikes in 2025.

When it comes to fleet electrification, private operators’ shared bike fleets have an e-bike share of 90%, compared to public fleets where the e-bike share is 26%. Interestingly, the TVD figures for public fleets show that their e-bikes have a TVD score of 4.6, compared to 2.1 for non-electric bikes.

Influential factors

Julien Chamussy, Co-Founder and Chief Executive of Fluctuo, gave his insights to Zag Daily into the status of both private and public bike-share systems, and how factors including politics and finance play their part.

“Private operators have significantly improved their operational efficiency through better deployment strategies and pricing models tailored to frequent users, including subscriptions and ride passes.” He also added that both segments had gained strong momentum in 2025, noting that the public systems’ fleet size reduction can be partly attributed to downsizing of various schemes.

The different approaches of the two strongest performing cities, London and Paris, were also examined. London remains Europe’s largest private shared-bike market, while in Paris, three operators were awarded four-year contracts, and saw their fees rise from €600,000 to €4 million annually across the three. Chamussy observed that the design and choice of individual cities’ shared-bike models comes down to politics and finance:

“Some cities want full control over the service and are willing to subsidise operations accordingly. Others prefer to rely on private operators, accepting lower levels of control over service management in exchange for reduced public spending and in some cases even generating revenues through concession fees charged to operators.”

Challenges for public systems

Chamussy sees electrification as one of the key challenges for public bike-share systems in the near future, citing the low fleet share yet high TVD of e-bikes in public fleets. “Electrification therefore represents a major opportunity to drive ridership growth and improve user adoption,” and added that the investment required for fleet electrification could encourage more cities to seek public-private partnerships.

The full Fluctuo report can be downloaded here.