For more than seven years, the city of Tartu has operated its bike-share system with a fleet that now needs renewing to ensure the service can continue over the longer term. The latest procurement for new bikes failed this spring. The city government is now trying again. A tender could be announced later this month under which the city would purchase 1,000 new electric bikes over four years through a framework agreement, Tartu Deputy Mayor Priit Humal said.

"We want to use a single procurement to buy a larger number of bikes so that the quantity the city needs is clear to all potential bidders and gives them confidence to plan their operations and development accordingly. On the other hand, we also want to get a lower price for the city. Until now, bikes have been purchased in smaller quantities and, as a result, the price per bike has been too high," Humal explained.

The city hopes the tender will attract bids for bikes costing less than €2,000 each. The estimated value of the procurement is €1.6 million, Humal added.

"The exact price and decisions will come once we receive the bids in the public procurement."

If the procurement is successful, the first batch of at least 250 new electric bikes could arrive on Tartu's streets as early as next season, said Roman Meeksa, head of Tartu's city transport company.

"The most important thing for us is that the bikes fit into our existing system, both in terms of infrastructure, so they can dock at and charge in our docking stations and, of course, that they are compatible with our software," Meeksa said.

Compatibility with the existing infrastructure has also been one of the main concerns in the past, Humal said.

"Since the current docking system provider ceased operations several years ago, there aren't too many companies on the market offering bikes compatible with this docking system. We see that for suppliers to enter the tender, they have to make additional efforts and incur additional costs to make their bikes compatible with our docking system," the deputy mayor said.

Meeksa added that a market survey was conducted in preparation for the procurement. The survey confirmed that there are enough suppliers on the market capable of producing suitable bikes.

"The main purpose of the market survey was to see whether, in addition to the current suppliers capable of producing bikes for our system — a manufacturer in Tallinn and one in Portugal — there are others that could offer their bikes for our system, increase competition and also bring down the price. There is interest. Whether they actually submit bids is another matter and if they do, what price they offer remains to be seen, but interest has been shown," Meeksa said.

Last year, more than 13,000 people took at least one trip using the bike-share system, which currently has around 6,000 regular users.

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