CityCycle will be a Huge Success in Brisbane!
With our great weather, scenic environment, bicycle paths and increased inner city living City Cycle is destined to be a huge success for Brisbane. Walk out your door, grab a bike, pop down to meet some friends at a café for breakfast or commute into work. Then drop the bike off at a station and walk away. Too easy!
No maintenance, no locks and when you want a bike again you can take anyone of 2000 from one of the 150 stations scattered over the inner city.
Similar systems have had raging success in cities around the world and the tentative plans for introduction into Brisbane with Australia’s first community bicycle rental system ensures that as it’s adopted by users City Cycle will continue to be rolled out in ever increasing circles. Maybe even appearing as satellite systems in more distant areas in time.
What a great way to see Brisbane
The impact on Brisbane can’t be appreciated now before City Cycle’s introduction but with similar systems in Europe, a cycling community has developed around their bicycle systems and this site is to facilitate that community.
This site is for news, ideas, discussions and feedback on the new Brisbane City Cycle community Bicycle system being installed for the Brisbane City Council by JCDecaux. It is intended as a place to advise travellers and locals alike on everything that is available when you grab a bike and go for a ride either as a function of your day or as a way of sight seeing some of our city. It is hoped that by discussing some of the issues that will come up we can ensure that problems are resolved before they get out of hand and when a great idea is thought of we can share it with others to take advantage of it. Tips and tricks, places to go or just a great venue to ride a bike to. We can share them all here, so come on board and tell us what you think and what you want?
Welcome to City Cycle Brisbane, coming to a street near you 
This site is maintained as a portal by Bill, a West End resident and keen supporter of the concept of Urban Cycling, healthy transport initiatives and a better community. I have no affiliation with Brisbane City Council or JCDecaux. I have notified them of this site’s existence.
I was motivated initially by my disappointment in seeing no presence on the Internet for this potentially wonderful initiative. (CityCycle site is now up).
This site is for discussion and information sharing by anyone whatever you’re opinion on CityCycle. I simply wish to help in my small way to help CityCycle be the success that it has the possibility to be if it is done correctly.
How can such a great scheme be planned and not understand that their ultimate failures will and ARE happening. Planners definitely know that this is not going to work, and what is the mayor trying to do? Of course the new bicycle lanes are great, but they sure make it difficult for a tourist, who wants to do the right thing, and be sustainable. Who is going to register for this system, pay this amount of money each time they use it, buy a helmet and make sure they are following all the rules, which to them, may not be self explanatory. What a joke, and of course the mayor knows this from the very beginning. Does he want to purposely look like a fool — especially to other european cities, we have made a mockery of it.
Still — expand more bicycle lanes — that is the only good thing that will come out of this.
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I agree on all the issues about pricing and helmets.
I think the helmet issue is a major one and I have a few ideas for posts to attempt to get some conversations started on the issue and see if we can help to get people thinking so that the City Cycle system doesn’t fail due to it.
Helmet law will kill the scheme. No successful bike hire scheme exists with mandatory helmet law.
Love the idea and am all for more cycling in Brisbane. I can’t help but think however, that this is purposely designed to fail.
1) Helmet laws. Australia is one of only 5 countries in the world with compulsory helmet laws. Velib / bike share etc work because they make cycling convenient. That’s why so many stations are needed so close together to achieve critical mass. Helmet laws mean that all bike share usage must be planned well in advance, effectively ruling out all spontaneous usage. No bike share scheme has succeeded in a location with compulsory helmet laws.
2) Pricing. Velib in Paris is EUR1 per day for casual users and in Melbourne its AUD$2.50, not AUD$10 like here. On top of that, users will need to purchase/rent a helmet from somewhere due to issue 1). This is a serious disincentive for non-regular users who would otherwise try it out and discover just how easy cycling is.
If the BCC and QLD governments were serious about this, they would except helmet wearing from the CBD as part of the trial.
Here’s hoping I’m wrong.
Still waiting for the helmet issue to be addressed…
This is a fabulous site. As someone who gets to visit your beautiful city on a regular basis I’m looking forward to the introduction of the bike system so I don’t have to bring my bike with me when I want to enjoy everything Brisbane has to offer. Thank you so much for keeping us informed. I look forward to hearing more about what’s happening as the cycle project progresses as well as getting ideas on places to go and things to do. Keep up the good work.