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Glasgow intends to open city-wide bike hire scheme

Expected for completion before the Commonwealth Games in 2014

Glasgow is to invest £1.3m on a city wide cycle hire scheme to appear before it becomes host to the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

The roll-out will see 150 bikes spread over 15 locations, with an ambition to have 400 bikes and 30 docking stations.

The operator role will go out to collective tender, while the city council will foot the £1.3 million capital costs.

The council said it expected it to be about £1.50 for two hours - presumably allowing users time to get up all those hills.

Council leader Gordon Matheson told the Scottish Herald: ""Cycling is cheap, keeps people fit and active, and is good for the environment. I am proud Glasgow is the first city in Scotland to launch such a scheme. Labour is committed to promoting cycling and I want Glasgow to be a city that is friendly to cyclists. This investment will provide an attractive option for people looking to travel quickly around the city. Creating a healthier, more active Glasgow is one of the key legacies of the Commonwealth Games. Bike-hire schemes are popular across Europe."

Unlike the London system, and more like one in Frankfurt, Germany, the bikes will lock to ordinary bike stands, and users will use their mobiles to obtain the code to the bike's lock.

Brian Devlin, the council's head of land services, said: "It would be the intention to implement the Mach scheme in spring 2014, prior to the start of the Commonwealth Games.

"It is recommended the council agrees to underwrite this project at this time to provide a level of certainty to private sector tenderers that the council is serious about this project."

But the city will be looking to Liverpool for advice, who have not yet managed to find an operating partner for a similar scheme, and Nottingham, where only one bike a day has been taken out in recent months.

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10 comments

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arowland | 10 years ago
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What about all those people who don't have a mobile (telephone)?

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A V Lowe | 10 years ago
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Oh dear, still a bit naieve in making the assumption that all bike hire schemes fit all bike hire needs. Glasgow, and most cities actually need 2 schemes, to cover 3 basic hire needs. I'm gobsmacked by the figure of £1.3m for the capital costs though. The bikes used by the 3 major bike sharing schemes in Germany, (including one system using bikes produced in Kilmarnock but sold mainly in Germany) can cost under €1500 - so 400 bikes = €600,000 plus annual servicing = €200,000, and since this type of bike requires no fixed docking station, so is the rest all admin and software costs?

The hire requirements are grab & go - what the London scheme was planned to do, where bikes circulate and the hire is free for a short period to keep bikes available around the city, then the OV-Fiets model of hire for the day, and return to the same place, mainly for commuters, making regular trips from the same places, and very successful in the Netherlands, 58 sites are set to open in the UK with Abellio operated train services. Finally there is long-term hire of a fully serviced bike, usually a folding bike and the equivalent of the Cycle to Work scheme without the attached hassles of maintaining it and replacing it when it wears out.

I've one package in mind that would cost about £75K to set up a pilot with 40 bikes, and could be part funded by sponsors, with existing examples in England that have become financially sustainable in under a year (ie income covers running costs). This would be a bike that you hire for a day or longer, and could cost as little as £2.50/day. The system currently being delivered in the UK was initially delivered by a public transport operator - Stagecoach, in London, many months before the Barclays scheme got started.

One of the German operations is privately operated, the other two are subsidiaries of Die Bahn, directly or with local administrations. The commercial system has been operating since 2006 and now runs in 9 other European countries, funding from both the user payments and from branding the bikes. Copenhagen has run free bikes for 18 years funded by sale of the bike branding, which paid the running costs. Bikes like these which do not require a hard wired docking station can have a small number introduced and then grown - and even get special events serviced by bringing in a load of extra bikes - this is happening for the Birmingham Cycle conference later this week where cycles bound for the Czech Republic will be stopping off in Birmingham en route.

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mad_scot_rider | 10 years ago
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True - now also seeing free bike repair clinics just outside Glasgow Green on a regular basis

I've changed my route to head from EK to Newton first, then just over 10 miles along the Clyde Walkway and I'm very pleased to see more and more cyclists of all ability levels

It's getting beautiful people

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euanlindsay replied to mad_scot_rider | 10 years ago
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Again, that is a Better Way to Work and the Bike Station.

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Simon_MacMichael | 10 years ago
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So... Boris Bikes, Scouse Cycles...

 39

... I'm claiming copyright on the term 'Weegie Wheels' for this one...

 3

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giff77 | 10 years ago
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Hope it does work out. Currently Glasgow just does not have an infrastructure that is cycle friendly within the city. Even with the new velodrome there seems to be no movement towards developing something to encourage commuting by bicycle which cycle hire schemes seem to be pitched at (I may be wrong in my perception here). So unless the docking stations are going to be scattered round Kelvingrove or Glasgow Green with easy accesss to the Clyde Canal sadly see it being an epic fail.

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euanlindsay replied to giff77 | 10 years ago
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There are charities in Glasgow successfully getting more people to commute by bike or public transport.

A Better Way to Work which is part of the Bike Station has been doing so for almost a year now as an example.

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Chiroptera | 10 years ago
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Glasgow isn't the first in Scotland. Dumfries has been doing it for a few years. Not sure about the stats though.

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netclectic replied to Chiroptera | 10 years ago
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Thextos wrote:

Glasgow isn't the first in Scotland. Dumfries has been doing it for a few years. Not sure about the stats though.

Technically Dumfries isn't a city.

I'm not sure how they work out the demand for these schemes. I can't really see it working in Glasgow but I hope to be proved wrong.

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mad_scot_rider | 10 years ago
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Quote:

... presumably allowing users time to get up all those hills.

Aye, and there's the rub.

Unless riders want to tootle from Glasgow Green to the SECC and back - or take their lives in their hands and head along Paisley Road West - then they're gonna hafta climb some hills

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