In 2013, Rome pulled the plug on its bike share program after it ran out of money and cars kept double-parking in front of its bike racks. Last year, a Hong Kong company gave up after many of its green bicycles ended up in the Tiber river. Months later, a Singapore company bailed after Romans stole the yellow bikes and broke them down for parts.

Rome has been a bike share wasteland, but Uber says things will be different for the shiny new red bikes it has introduced all over the city.

“We’ve tested ours on Rome’s cobblestones,” said Michele Biggi, the manager of Uber’s Jump electric-bike program in southwestern Europe, who added that previous competitors’ bikes weren’t up to the city’s demands and “could have fallen down with just a gust of wind.”

He has big plans for the Uber bikes, he said, which “will change Rome and give the city a new lifeblood.”