NEWS
To the LNP administration, Brisbane’s CityCycle scheme is slowly gaining speed after a wobbly start caused by the weather. To the Labor opposition, the chain has well and truly slipped off CityCycle and it’s ground to a halt financially.
At the opening of Brisbane’s 100th CityCycle bike station recently, Lord Mayor Graham Quirk announced that a trip to Paris was up for grabs in celebration of the milestone that meant Brisbane City Council was now two-thirds of the way through rolling out Australia’s largest bike hire scheme, which will have 150 stations and 2000 bikes between St Lucia and Newstead when it is complete.
Cr Quirk said more than 4700 subscribers had made more than 40,000 trips since the CityCycle bike hire scheme first opened last October.
But Labor’s Lord Mayoral candidate Ray Smith hit back saying: “This week it was reported that just 2277 subscriptions were active – less than a quarter of what is needed to make the scheme viable.” Mr Smith said that celebrating the100th bike station showed that the LNP Administration had the wrong priorities for the city, with “ hundreds of bicycles are left standing idle every day”.
“At the moment, this CityCycle scheme is nothing to celebrate,” Mr Smith said. “This LNP administration is still pushing ahead and pouring millions of dollars of ratepayers’ money into a scheme that is failing.
“It’s clear residents are not using CityCycle but the LNP continue to throw good money after bad in an attempt to fix their botched bike hire scheme.
“Just last week, the LNP cut $400,000 from a program to make cycling black spots safer – but at the same time they poured an additional $200,000 into the failed CityCycle scheme that no one is using.
“Earlier this year, the LNP cut $382 million in funding for important local projects and services including 19 local roads projects, five bikeways, parks, community grants and library books.
“The prioritisation of CityCycle over vital suburban projects is further proof that this LNP administration has the wrong priorities for Brisbane. “If I am elected as Lord Mayor, I will undertake an immediate audit into the scheme to find out how things went so wrong for CityCycle.
“Since day one, this scheme has been plagued by safety concerns, community opposition, million-dollar budget blowouts, delays in delivery and an appalling implementation.
“The CityCycle scheme has been completely mismanaged and there is a lot of work to do if this scheme is going to be safe and successful,” he said.
Lord Mayor Quirk said: “CityCycle has got off to a promising start so far, particularly considering much of the inner city went under water during the floods and the popular Riverwalk was washed away,” Cr Quirk said.
“And we expect these numbers to continue to grow as we rollout more bikes and stations – we’ve seen the number of hire bike trips jump 30 per cent since February as flood-damaged stations have been repaired and the weather’s cooled down.”
