City saddles up to take bike sharing scheme for a spin

Published on Thursday 30 April 2009 09:41

TRANSPORT bosses are to push on with plans to introduce a bike sharing scheme in the Capital, despite a survey failing to find public support for the project.

Council chiefs hope to introduce a similar system to those already in operation in Paris and Barcelona, where bikes are left at points across the city for public use.

However, a study set up to gauge the popularity of the proposed scheme found that only one in ten people in the Capital was "very likely" to use it.

Twenty per cent of the 950 respondents said they would be "quite likely" to use the bikes, while just four per cent of motorists indicated that they would be likely to switch from four wheels to two.

The council said the market research indicated a "significant level" of potential demand for the scheme, which would help reach the target of four per cent of all journeys being by bike by 2010.

Councillor Iain Whyte, who first proposed the idea after seeing a similar scheme in operation in Lyon, said he was still optimistic that it would be taken forward.

He said: "The report is not ultra positive, but they are now saying they can look at using advertising revenues to pay for it. I wouldn't have thought we would be talking about huge numbers of people using it anyway – it's about creating an opportunity for people and for visitors to the city.

"I don't see it as being about people ditching their current model of travel. It's about short trips within the city centre."

Council officials estimate that between 16,000 and 43,000 people are likely to use the scheme in the first year of its operation, leading to between 1.5 million and 4.7m bike hires.

It is likely that as many as 3400 bikes would be needed to meet that level of demand, with hotspots in the city centre as well as the south and north-east of the city.

A report going before the council's transport committee next week says an expected funding shortfall could be made up by receipts from advertising and sponsorship.

Councillor Phil Wheeler, the council's transport convener, said: "Aside from contributing towards our objective of increasing the proportion of journeys made by bike to four per cent by 2010, the introduction of a scheme would provide an environmentally-friendly transport option for the people of Edinburgh. It would also encourage increased physical activity by residents and, with that, provide a welcome boost to their health and wellbeing.

"The experience of other European cities that have introduced the scheme has been hugely positive. The challenge now is to identify advertising, sponsorship and other funding opportunities to support the scheme financially."

A similar scheme in Barcelona has 100,000 users and has seen the number of bikes increase from 1500 to 6000 in just one year, the council said.