Public Bikes in Daejeon

Spend any time walking around Daejeon and you will pass a free* bicycle station. There are 144 bike stations with over 1900 bikes distributed around the city. Their purpose, to provide a convenient green public transport alternative for the citizens of Daejeon. I've been wanting to use one of the bikes for a while, but the last few months have just been so cold. Now that spring is here and the weather is getting warmer, Jihyeon and I thought we would grab a couple of the bikes and cycle along the river.

*free for the first hour, 500won (50c) for each 30minutes after that, and then 1000won ($1) for every 30 minutes over 3 hours. If you go over your free hour it will get charged to your phone. 

There are no bike helmets provided, but there doesn't appear to be any laws regarding wearing helmets in Korea when riding bicycles/scooters. In Australia I always wear a helmet, but since we would be riding on a designated cycle path and not doing a million miles an hour, I wasn't too worried about wearing one. 

Don't speak or read Korean? Don't worry. There is an English menu you can use to check out a bicycle. Just hit the bottom in the bottom right corner of the touch screen.

To hire a bike you need to
1. Select your phone provider.
2. Enter your mobile number.
3. Enter your ARC number.
4. Hit the button to get the security code sent to your phone.
5. Enter the 6 digit code sent via SMS.
6. Select the bike you want to hire
7. On the handle bars of the bicycle is a computer with 4 buttons and a small screen. Press button #3
8. Push the bike forward to remove it from its station.

Bicycle selection screen.

Use your muscles to push the bike forward.

This is the bicycle computer. Press key #4 to cycle through the timer/distance/speed modes on the LCD display.

The map of where I am and near by bike stations, represented as pie charts to show how many bicycles are at the station.

And we are off and racing.

Past expo park.

stopped for a snack.

and we are off again.

Some people fishing.

Jihyeon in la la land.

This is kind of interesting. This is a weir. In the wet season when it rains they can drop the entire length of the weir wall so it lays down flat on the concrete. It is held up by what look like giant air bags. Last year I saw this when it was laying flat on the concrete and I wondered how they lifted the wall back up.

More people fishing.

A drain. Fascinating I know.

The KTX bridge that takes the train north towards Seoul.

Some guys playing baseball on a Sunday afternoon in the park.

We then turned around and started heading back.

We decided to cross to the other side of the river and take a slightly different rout home.

Passing the weir again.

Some people having fun on paddle boats in the river near expo park.

And... the expo bridge.

It was a good day.