CityCycle – Missing a Great Opportunity?

As I’ve mentioned before, my motivation in starting this site is promote CitCycle and all the advantages that it can bring to Brisbane.

I’m not a naysayer like some that the media like to promote who say CityCycle will be a white elephant from the get go. If a large metropolis like London (unlike Amsterdam) that is without a long heritage of bicycle use can embrace a community bicycle programme and infrastructure, surely little Brisbane with all our advantages of great climate and relatively little congestion can pull it off. (If you think we have traffic go to London.)

But like Melbourne we have helmet laws that insist we wear helmets and look at the disaster that has evolved there with Melbourne Bike Share. People claim to want to use the system in Melbourne but because of the helmet laws they don’t have the convenience of jumping on and off a bike as they please, as they don’t carry helmets around with them all day.

From Mike Rubbo’s site is a letter mentioning a comparison between the introduction of Melbourne Bike Share and DublinBikes which are of similar size.

…I was rather shocked to hear of the low uptake of the Melbourne bikes. I can’t believe that there are less than 70 trips per day.

At the moment in Dublin we are getting daily trips of close to 5,000 from our 450 bikes. This makes us one of the most successful schemes in Europe.

Our expectation was to sign up 2,000 members in our first year. In our first 11 months we have signed up 37,000 members (about 25,000 annual subscriptions and 12,000 three-day memberships…

…We charge €10 for an annual membership card. This is such good value for money, that people are prepared to give it a go.…

…There is NO mandatory helmet law. We learned that lesson from Australia. After the introduction of Dublin Bikes, there was some pressure to bring in compulsory helmets, but thankfully common sense prevailed.

With CityCycle about to start we have a unique moment in it’s development when everyone will be enthused to use it and maybe for the first time in years get on a bike.

An annual membership in Dublin is €10 compared to our $60.50! In Dublin to try the bikes for 3 days costs €2 here in Brisbane it’s going to cost $11 for one day! Are people going to give it a go just for the fun of it, at those prices?

If there are issues with helmets and people just can’t be bothered as they want to just give it a try for the heck of it, the moment will be missed. Then if the bikes like in Melbourne start to become a constant eyesore that aren’t being used what will the community start to think of the scheme. To regain the lost momentum that is inherent in the start of this scheme will be very difficult.

We are at a unique moment in the life of the CityCycle scheme and I don’t see any serious movement by the authorities towards the rectification of this issue. Is the BCC just going to “See what happens” and then deal with it? Will that then be an opportunity lost?

What will we do with 2000 leaf covered mould infested bikes if they just sit there, like Melbourne? Is that what we want?