Oslo Bysykkel (“Oslo City Bike”) is the name of a public-private partnership project of Oslo, Norway and one of the outdoor advertising units of Clear Channel Communications. It is a bicycle sharing system that allows renting a bicycle for a maximum of 3 hours between 06:00 and midnight.
Membership in the sharing system costs NOK 90 per year for individuals. Besides that, the entire system is financed by advertising sold and managed by Clear Channel Communications. The advertising is displayed on the bikes and on outdoor bilboards set up in connection with the bike stalls.
Clear Channel Communications runs similar projects in Barcelona, Zaragoza, and Stockholm with identical bikes and hub systems. As of 2007, similar schemes are also in effect in other European cities, including JCDecaux’s Aix-en-Provence, Rouen, Barcelona (Bicing), Brussels, Lyon (Vélo’v), Nantes (Bicloo), Paris (Vélib), Toulouse, Seville (Sevici), Vienna, Sandnes, and others Pamplona (Cemusa), Copenhagen, OYBike, Call a Bike (Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, Stuttgart, Munich, Karlsruhe), Copenhagen/Helsinki/Aarhus (CIOS), Stockholm and Zaragoza.
