Launch date and scale of Edinburgh electric bike hire scheme revealed

Up to 200 rental bikes in city centre to kick off two-year pilot

A new electric bike hire scheme should be in place in time for this year’s Edinburgh Festival in August, city councillors have revealed.

Some 100-200 cycles would be available in the city centre at the start of a planned two-year trial, which would be at not cost to the City of Edinburgh Council.

Just Eat Cycles added electric bikes to its Edinburgh scheme in 2020 | Transport for Edinburgh/Serco

That could be extended to 600-800 bikes across a wider area of the city after the first months of the pilot, which comes four years after the previous Just East Cycles scheme collapsed.

The city council also announced on Tuesday that the speed of the bikes would be automatically restricted to below their normal 15.5mph limit in areas with high numbers of pedestrians.

Councillors will next week be recommended to give the go ahead to a competition between cycle hire firms Dott, Lime and other companies to chose the operator, which would bear the costs of the scheme.

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Dott runs a scheme in Bath, which, like Edinburgh, is a world heritage site, while Lime operates in cities including London.

A city council spokesperson said: “We are hopeful of it being in place, even if it’s a diluted version of the overall scheme, prior to the Festival.”

Transport convener Stephen Jenkinson, who pledged in December to launch a scheme in the summer, said: “It’s reasonable to have a trial predominantly focused in the city centre to prove the demand is there before expanding it out.

“If the demand is there, I can certainly see the scheme expanding, with the coverage moving across much of Edinburgh.”

Previous scheme was hit by vandalism and theft, and cost £1.5m a year

The Just Eat Cycles scheme was launched in 2018 and soon became very popular, with annual hires doubling to 250,000 by its second year and it was expanded as far as Musselburgh.

However, it suffered from significant vandalism and theft, and was ended by the council in 2021 amid costs of £1.5 million a year.

Mr Jenkinson said: “One of the advantages of a newer form of this scheme is the technology has advanced to such an extent that the service can flex quite quickly.

“If there are areas that either we or the provider are uncomfortable with, that can be discussed and managed.

“We can control not only the locations where the bikes can be picked up and dropped off but also the speed with which the bikes can be used in different parts of the town.

“You might allow a bike to go a certain speed in a certain part of town, but in other, more pedestrian areas, you might want to govern the speed at which the cycles can travel from a safety point of view.

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“We have a level of control that previously wasn’t technically possible.”

Mr Jenkinson said concerns about the speed of other riders in pedestrian areas, such as delivery cyclists on electric bikes, was a matter for the police rather than the council.

He has said the scheme would only offer e-bikes rather than traditional cycles because Edinburgh is a “relatively hilly city”.