🚲 Mobility

StadtRAD Hamburg Bike Share

Hamburg's station-based bike share has run since July 2009, operated by DB Connect under a city contract awarded for 2019-2028. About 4,300 bikes and 56 cargo pedelecs stand at nearly 360 stations; the first 30 minutes are free. Live per-station availability is published as open data through Hamburg's SensorThings API, and bikes became bookable in the hvv switch transit app in 2026.

Live 📅 since 2009 ◆ Source-checked

🤖 AI-generated summary of the sources below — how this works · 🔎 Last verified 2026-08-02

🚲 Mobility Cycling Shared mobility Sensors & IoT Open data

📊 Impact

Operator reported rentals up 11% from March to September 2024 after the fleet was modernised. Annual rental totals circulating in the press are mutually inconsistent and are not repeated here.

🎓 Lesson

The data layer, not the bikes, is what makes this legible: because the city publishes live dock occupancy under an open licence, anyone can audit whether the network actually reaches the outer districts it keeps promising to serve.

Evidence🏛️ Official

Scale🏙️ City-wide

CostCity subsidy reported as initially about EUR 1 million per year under the 2019-2028 contract, down from about EUR 2.6 million, rising with fleet growth.

FundingCity of Hamburg operating subsidy under a competitively tendered 2019-2028 contract, plus user fees (EUR 8.90/year since April 2024, first 30 minutes free). Not advertising-financed.

📖 Terms in this entry: Open data · Urban data platform (UDP) · 15-minute city

Sources

↗ StadtRAD Hamburg (operator site)Operator's own page: in service since 2009, about 4,200 bikes and 56 cargo pedelecs, app-based rental.

↗ Hamburg BVM — StadtRAD service pageCity page: DB Connect as operator, over 4,300 bikes at over 350 stations, 56 cargo pedelecs, first 30 minutes free, annual fee raised to EUR 8.90 on 13 April 2024.

↗ Transparenzportal Hamburg — StadtRAD-Stationen datasetThe data layer: station positions plus currently available bikes and cargo pedelecs, served live via the OGC SensorThings API and an MQTT broker at iot.hamburg.de. Publisher BVM, licence Datenlizenz Deutschland Namensnennung 2.0.

↗ Hochbahn press release: StadtRAD in hvv switch (30 June 2026)About 4,300 bikes at nearly 360 stations, bookable directly in the hvv switch app alongside transit, carsharing, ridepooling and e-scooters.

↗ Deutsche Bahn: StadtRAD offering keeps growing (17 October 2024)About 3,900 bikes at 325 stations, 50 cargo pedelecs, ten new stations that October, rentals up 11% after modernisation.

↗ KCW: tender for StadtRAD HamburgContract 2019-2028 awarded to DB Connect on 29 June 2018; fleet to grow from 2,450 to 4,500 bikes; city subsidy cut from about EUR 2.6m to about EUR 1m per year.

This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed above and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.

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Compare this project

🇨🇦 BIXI Montréal: city-owned bikes, non-profit operator, operator-held data · Montreal Ownership contrast: Montreal's operator holds copyright in trip data; Hamburg publishes live dock occupancy openly under DL-DE-BY. 🇩🇰 Bycyklen: Tablet-and-GPS Bike-Share · Copenhagen Copenhagen's GPS bike-share went insolvent in 2022 when subsidy fell away; Hamburg's tendered 2019-2028 subsidy model survived. 🇩🇪 hvv switch Mobility Hubs & App · Hamburg Same city, same app: StadtRAD bikes became bookable inside the hvv switch mobility-hub app in 2026.

Explore the wider context

🔑 Your Smart City Is Owned by Someone Else 🚲 Cycling guide 🏙️ Hamburg city profile 🚲 Mobility projects

📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “StadtRAD Hamburg Bike Share” — Hamburg, Germany. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/hamburg-stadtrad-bikeshare/ (last verified 2026-08-02). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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