BENGALURU: After an agreement with Yulu for deploying public bicycle sharing services in the electronic city, ELCITA (Electronics City Industrial Township Authority) has now tied up with Bounce, another shared mobility service, to launch a scooter and cycle service in the area. “We are trying to decongest this area and encouraging use of public and shared transport. In order to minimise use of personal vehicles, we are entering into agreements with companies and providing many options. After launching Yulu cycles last year, we have introduced Bounce scooters and cycles last week,” said Rama N S, CEO of ELCITA.
The scooter fleet includes both electric and fuel-based vehicles, which, along with the cycles, can be parked near high footfall areas. “We have launched 11 docking zones to begin with and will expand to 26 soon in electronic city area. With Bounce, the scooters and cycles can be dropped off anywhere but to organise the system and make sure the vehicles are available for all, we have located designated zones with ELCITA,” said Shamanth H, head of market acquisition at Bounce.
“Some of the docking zones include spots outside Infosys, Wipro, 3M junction, residential complexes and apartments,” Shamanth said, adding that foopaths will not be occupied for the purpose. Of their fleet of 6,000 scooters and 2,000 cycles in the city, 10 to 15 per cent of them will be made available in Electronics City. They are in talks with ORRCA (Outer Ring Road Companies Association) to implement the same in the Outer Ring Road area.
However, as there is no restriction on parking, people park them in other areas of the city. Users log on to the app, receive an OTP which they type into a keypad on the scooter to start it.ELCITA plans to encourage shared mobility by increasing the fleet and docking spaces of the two companies in Electronics city Phase-2 as well. In addition, four shuttle buses have been deployed to go around the area. “The flyovers are far too congested and the Metro will take time to connect this area. We need to start switching to shared mobility services in the meantime,” Rama added.