Cairo Bike is Egypt's first public bike-share scheme: owned by Cairo Governorate, paid for by the Swiss Drosos Foundation, delivered with UN-Habitat and technically supervised by ITDP. It covers about six square kilometres of Cairo Governorate — Downtown, Abdeen, Azbakia, Attaba, Sayeda Zeinab and Garden City — with Zamalek named for a later phase. A first attempt in July 2022 collapsed within weeks; the governorate cancelled the maintenance contract that August after the contractor demanded more money, and bicycles disappeared from the docks. The scheme was inaugurated again on 20 October 2022, weeks before Egypt hosted COP27, with 250 GPS-tracked bicycles at 25 to 26 solar-powered stations and fares from one Egyptian pound an hour. It stalled a second time. The Danish-Egyptian Rascom-Donkey Republic consortium was dropped for the Egyptian operator Baddel, and the system reopened in September 2023 on a new app. In June 2024 Al-Masry Al-Youm watched the stations for seven days: the app refused bookings, the hotline printed on the signs was disconnected, bicycles were poorly maintained, and pedestrians and motorcycles stood in the lanes. Of roughly 15 kilometres of protected lane planned, about two were built, behind 50-centimetre plastic barriers. No public trip data or GBFS feed was found.
Rebutting the newspaper investigation on 8 July 2024, Cairo Governorate said the app had drawn more than 37,000 users since the September 2023 relaunch, 18,000 of them since January 2024, with about 2,000 regular users and 43,821 trips completed in total across 25 stations and 250 bicycles. Every one of these is a governorate figure relayed by Al-Masry Al-Youm; there is no independent audit, and no station-level or trip data was published against which they could be checked. The same statement promised roughly 500 bicycles at 45 stations 'within several months'; this review found no source recording that second phase opening. The most recent confirmation found that the system was running is that July 2024 statement.
🎓 Lesson
A philanthropic grant can buy bicycles, docks and an app, but it cannot buy an operator that stays or a street that is safe to ride on. Cairo's scheme collapsed twice in its first year and was rebuilt around a new contractor, while the protected lane network that would have made it a transport system stopped at about two kilometres of the fifteen planned.
Evidence🏛️ Official
Scale🏘️ District
FundingDrosos Foundation (Zurich), with UN-Habitat; ITDP technical supervision
Sources
↗ ITDP — With the Launch of Cairo's Bikeshare, Cycling Gains Momentum in AfricaFetched. Verifies Drosos funding, UN-Habitat and ITDP roles, the Rascom-Donkey Republic consortium winning a competitive tender, 250 bikes at 26 docks, six square kilometres covering Downtown, Sayeda Zeinab, Garden City and Attaba, the EGP 1 per hour fare, and the protected-lane plan. ITDP supervised the project, so it is a participant source on delivery quality.
↗ Cairo Governorate — Cairo Bike ProjectFetched. Owner/authority source. Verifies Baddel Bike Share as the local operator, the partner list, 250 bikes at 25 stations, the phase-1 districts, phase 2 as still 'sought', and that bike lanes of one to two metres were installed across approximately 2 km.
↗ Al-Masry Al-Youm — Cairo's streets write the end of Cairo Bike (investigation)Fetched. Independent seven-day field observation, 17-23 June 2024: app rejected all bookings, hotline on project signage disconnected, no bikes at Qasr El-Aini station, poor maintenance, lanes encroached by pedestrians and motorcycles. The strongest independent evidence on the entry.
↗ Al-Masry Al-Youm — How to use Cairo Bike after its restart (22 October 2023)Fetched. Verifies the second shutdown and the 2023 restart under a new operator after the previous operator's failure, 250 bikes at 26 downtown stations, and a higher relaunch fare (EGP 5 per hour plus EGP 2). Note a date conflict: a companion governorate statement dates the local operator's takeover to April 2023, while the governorate's own user figures run from the September 2023 relaunch.
↗ Youm7 — The truth about Cairo Bike's suspension (13 August 2022)Fetched. Verifies that Cairo Governorate cancelled the maintenance contract in August 2022 after the contractor demanded excessive compensation, that only 5 of 26 phase-1 stations were then built, and the full published fare table including student rates and annual subscriptions.
↗ Middle East Eye — Cairo's first bike-sharing project comes to nothingFetched. Independent international confirmation of the 2022 stall before COP27: station guards told to stop handing out bikes, governorate declining to comment, and an engineering academic on the absence of road redesign for cycle lanes. Its claim that a ride-hailing company objected is reported as an allegation and is not used in this entry.
↗ Xinhua — Cairo launches 1st bike-sharing project (21 October 2022)Fetched. Verifies the 20 October 2022 inauguration by Prime Minister Madbouly, 250 GPS-tracked bikes at 26 solar-powered docks, station sizes, and the EGP 1 per hour / EGP 8 per day fares. Checked specifically for a project cost: it states Drosos funding but gives no monetary figure, so the widely repeated 1.5 million USD figure is not carried in this entry.
↗ Cairo Bike app (Google Play, developer Velvioo)FETCH FAILED — Google Play returned only navigation chrome with the body truncated, and an AppBrain mirror returned HTTP 403. Search results indicate an Android update in June 2025 and removal of the iOS build in January 2025, but neither could be confirmed against a fetched page, so no claim from this source is used in the snippet. Listed only to document that the post-2024 status check was attempted and came up short.
📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Cairo Bike: Egypt's First Public Bike Share” — Cairo, Egypt. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/cairo-bike-share/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.
