Bike Transportation – Seville vs. Prague

After my arrival to Seville, I quickly started to notice how popular and how different bike transportation is here compared to my home city – Prague, Czech Republic. Seville is a perfect city for cycling because of its pleasant climate year-round, extremely well-developed bicycle lane network, and in addition, the city has a very low altitude (7 meters on average), so for cyclists, it is very easy and comfortable to ride around the city.

development of the cycling network throughout the years in Seville

“The secret to our success was treating cycling like a system of transportation — building an entire network of connected lanes, instead of a few disconnected lanes year after year.” These are the words of Manuel Calvo, a member of the Plan de la Bicicleta de Sevilla, a project that promotes and develops a cycling transportation network in Seville.

Nowadays, the Seville bike lane network is approximately 180 km long (could be compared to the distance from Sevilla to Málaga by car). The city set up a public bicycle rental network called Sevici, with more than 250 stations around Seville on which more than 2600 bicycles are distributed. In addition, you can also find Lime bikes around the city, which is an American company operating rental services of scooters and bikes all over the world. Currently, approximately 10% of Sevillian people use cycling as a means of transport (around 70,000 people). Therefore, it is no surprise that in the Global Bicycle Cities Index 2022, Seville is on 31st place, n. 1 Spanish city, and also n. 1 South European city.

bike lanes in Prague

In Prague, we have around 70 km of bicycle lanes. As you can see in the picture, it certainly cannot be called a cycling network, because the lanes are not connected, they do not have a following to each other. This makes it very inconvenient and often very uncomfortable to ride a bike in the city. On the other hand, Prague is quite different from Seville, if we consider two factors – weather and altitude. In the winter, the weather gets very cold, and daily temperatures rarely exceed more than 2 degrees, therefore riding a bike is not only uncomfortable but also dangerous. Moreover, the average altitude in Prague is around 300 meters, so the city is very hilly, and biking can get physically demanding and time-consuming. In some cases, the limiting factor in the development of cycling transportation in Prague is also local district politicians who are in opposition to the city council.

In Prague, there is Lime operating too, and also a bike-sharing network called Rekola that can be found mainly in the center of the city.

In the Global Bicycle Cities Index 2022, Prague possesses 73rd place, it is considered the least suitable city for cycling in Europe and ranks among the worst in the world.

To conclude, it is amazing and impressive how bicycle transportation has been, and still is evolving throughout the years in Seville, and for many people, it has become a common means of transport here. In Prague, there are several factors that do not really allow an easy implementation of a well-connected cycling network; however, I firmly believe that transportation experts can at least continuously try and look for ways how to continue developing it further. Of course, that must come hand in hand with political support.