NEWS
Six months on from the launch of the CityCycle bike hire scheme, City Council says it’s happy with its progress since October 1 and describes its growing usage as a “quiet revolution”.
The Independent put a series of questions to the Lord Mayor’s office over the six-month milestone, and those questions and all the answers can be viewed online at our website. We’ll also look at the scheme in more detail next issue.
But Public and Active Transport chair Margaret de Wit said in response to our questions that the CityCycle scheme’s popularity was increasing with more journeys taking place each month.
“As more stations go live daily trips are increasing with the weekday average of 180 in February rising to over 250 in March so far and we expect this to continue with the onset of cooler weather,” she said.
“CityCycle is a great commuter transport option for those living in or near the inner-city and there is a quiet revolution occurring with more and more people taking it up every day.
“Every commuter who uses a bike instead of a car is one less vehicle on our congested road network.”
Cr de Wit said subscribers had taken more than 28,000 trips on CityCycle bikes since October.
HAVE YOUR SAY!
Is it too early to declare the CityCycle bike hire scheme a great success .... or for that matter a terrible and costly yellow elephant?
Was it doomed from the start because of our compulsory helmet laws? Was it rolled out in too grand a way? Or is it money well spent to make the inner-city less reliant on cars? And was council upfront in its answers to our many questions on the scheme ... or perhaps just a little too PRish for our own good? Email your thoughts to: editor@theindependent.com.au and we’ll run a selection of responses in our 13 April issue.
