The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

As part of being your comprehensive guide to living in the capital, we take it as our responsibility to tell you about the best services, restaurants, and cafés in Cairo. Today, we’re talking about a certain service that can make your difficult commute in the city a little more bearable.

After Careem’s success as a ride-hailing app, they’ve decided to offer a new type of service called Careem Bike. When you use that service, they send you a scooter instead of a car, which is much better in terms of getting through traffic. At the end of the day, you’ll find yourself wasting less time, and spending less money on your commutes.

Careem Bike, or Scooters, are about 50% cheaper than cars, but unfortunately, it only works for just one passenger; safety concerns and all that. When they launched the service, they had strict regulations on the type of scooters, but as per usual, after a lot of demand on the service, the quality decreased and the company relied on lesser quality scooters that aren’t as comfortable.

The meter opens with 6 EGP, and the cheapest ride is 8 EGP. For a better idea on how much your commute could cost, we present to you the price of different rides. A ride from Tahrir Square to the Giza Railway Station is about 15 EGP at rush hour, from Agouza to Al-Arish Street in El-Haram is 22 EGP, and from Downtown to Heliopolis is around 16 EGP. Of course, taking a car would be much more expensive.

So what was our personal experience? Well, we found the comfort to be a bit inconsistent, and reliant on the type of scooter as we said. However, if your main focus is speed and cost, you’d be more than fine. But, what we did notice is that some captains need a bit more training on acting appropriately.

One time, we took a scooter from the British Centre in Agouza to an address in Giza, it only cost 11 EGP, but unfortunately, to get us there, the captain skipped a red light and was a bit obscene in his language towards some car drivers. We had to tell him that we’re cancelling the ride, only then did he calm down and take us there safely. Another time, the captain rejected our route, and drove recklessly with excessive speed on his unnecessarily longer route. We paid 19 EGP instead of the usual 15 EGP.

However, that’s not always the case. A lot of the times we’d rode with captains that speak eloquently and asked us which route we’d prefer. We found a lot of very attentive and friendly captains that ensured our safety and comfort.

Careem Bike is available for one passenger only and for both genders. If you’re looking to try it out for yourself, remember to not direct your face towards the wind to avoid dust, and change your seating position regularly. May you have happy and safe commuting, Cairenes.