Rome's Bike-Sharing Program Is a Bust

In Vittorio De Sica’s classic 1948 film The Bicycle Thief, the despairing protagonist crosses Rome in a vain search for his stolen bike. Today, Mayor Ignazio Marino is starring in a modern-day sequel. While municipal bike-sharing has thrived from Paris to São Paulo, Rome’s Roma’n’bike has been hobbled by crooks, politics, and geography—the city sits on its famous seven hills—combined with residents’ reluctance to abandon cars and scooters. “Romans don’t like to show up anywhere sweaty from a bike ride,” says Federico Niglia, a history professor at Luiss University who owns a bike but rarely pedals. “You have theft, bureaucracy, political wrangling. The same problems that plague the country are dooming bike-sharing.”

Roma’n’bike was introduced in 2008, a year after the successful Vélib’ in Paris and before bike-sharing reached New York, Milan, or London. Today, though the program still exists, it’s almost impossible to find a bike. “It’s like the Roman Empire: We were first, now we’re behind,” says Eleonora Carletti, who works in a restaurant near Via del Corso, where an abandoned Roma’n’bike rack props up a board showing daily specials. Although she says she enjoyed Barcelona’s program on a recent visit, at home “I never really used the bikes because I have a car.”