The following video shows 24 h city bike traffic in Helsinki and Vantaa on Tuesday July 23, 2019. Data is provided by Digitransit open data from HSL.

Each circle on the map represents a city bike station. The larger the circle, the more bikes are available at the bike station.

The data shows bike traffic on Tuesday July 23 for city bikes in Helsinki and Vantaa. Ed Sheeran performed on a concert in Malmi airport on this very day, starting from 6 PM. The concert had 60,000 attendees on two nights. These were the largest concerts ever in Finland.

Network effect affects the city bike usage

The city bike traffic around Malmi airport is not visible on the video. This is due to:

– The walking distance from the near-by bike docks is too long
– Helsinki and Vantaa have separate city bike card systems. Malmi is located just between the two bike systems.

The network effect will hopefully be improved in the upcoming years. Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa city bikes could in the future be part the same system.

City bikes are the ideal transportation means for the last mile. Large concerts would benefit from easy access to city bikes.