Posts Tagged ‘melbourne’
We blogged recently on the launch of Melbourne’s bike share scheme.
As it happens I’m over in Melbourne at the moment for the 2010 Carbon Expo. It’s my first trip and, I must say, it’s a cool town. I was particularly impressed to walk out of my hotel and almost immediately stumble across one of the bike stations for the new scheme.
The concept has been working well in other places around the world — Paris and Montreal have had successful schemes for a while (once the Parisians had stopped stealing the bikes) and London has also recently launched its own version, sponsored by Barclays bank — so a bike share scheme should work well in Melbourne, right?
Wrong.
Ok, sure, the cycle network is pretty good; the city is high density with everything pretty close to everything else; even the weather tries to help out, afterall cool and grey is perfect for cycling. So the ingredients are there, but none of these pros can outweigh a big a very obvious con. Victoria, like the rest of Australia, is a nanny state. In particular, you’re required by law to wear a cycling helmet when you jump on a bike, and they’re not kidding either.
Only moments after finding the bike station I spotted my first actual user — a middle aged chap proudly peddling alongside the Yarra astride his bright blue share bike. ‘Wow’, I thought, ‘This really works and people are actually using these bikes’. But disaster was only moments away. Unfortunately, our eco conscious bike sharer was not wearing a helmet and even more unfortunately three female police officers, also on bikes as it happens, were peddling in the opposite direction. You can guess what happened next. I stood and watched, fascinated, as our three cycling crime fighters wrote this poor guy a ticket for $150 (yup, I looked it up). I don’t think we’ll see him back on one of those bikes any time soon.
Now I understand that rules are rules, but that little exchange struck me as totally absurd. Bike share schemes are presumably not targeted at regular cyclists. These folks will already already have their own bike, helmet and (for the hardcore) lashings of lycra. Instead, they’re aimed at people who may occasionally want to use a bike to get from A to B, or for that spur of the moment trip when you decide to jump on a bike instead of walk or take public transport, or maybe for those tourists whos feet are getting tired.
So what do all our would-be bike sharers have in common? Well one thing is for sure, they don’t spend their day carrying around a bike helmet on the off chance that they might jump on a share bike at some point!
I’m not the only one who thinks this is a ridiculous situation. A quick search on google revealed a number of articles and blog posts on the topic — here’s one from The Age back in July.
So what can we learn from Melbourne’s experience? Well firstly that we need to lighted up. All of the most popular cycling cities in the world allow you to ride a bike without wearing a helmet. They manage to achieve this with a decrease in the number of injuries per km cycled compared to Australia. Secondly, it’s vital that councils do everything they can to ensure citizens adopt these great initiatives. There’s no point trying something like bike sharing if potential users have very compelling reasons to stay away. These issues need to be identified upfront and addressed before you launch your project. In this particular instance I understand the Victorian government is coming under considerable pressure to adapt council by-laws within the CBD that will provide an exemption for bike share users. I, for one, hope that this happens and happens quickly.
At Greensense we love hearing about innovative ideas that reduce our environmental impact and improve the sustainability of our cities. For a while we have been following the Bike Share schemes — particularly in Paris and Montreal — and were pleased to hear that recently the scheme has arrived in Australia.
Melbourne has just launched their scheme with 10 stations and 100 bikes, with a plan to scale to 50 stations and 600 bikes later in the year. We’ll be watching closely to see if this simple behavioural change can make a difference to CBD travel.
