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CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
"Can the success of the bike hire schemes work in other cities?"
(5 posts)-
Posted 12 years ago #
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On soon.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Good piece 'cycling as transport'.
Mentioned ScratchBikes and http://www.bromptondock.co.uk
Posted 12 years ago # -
Haven't listened to this (yet), but another city with a hire scheme is Ljubljana (we're just back from a cycling holiday in Slovenia).
Seemed to be pretty popular with the locals. We didn't use it - we were only in the city for a day and, as a tourist, it's pretty easy to get about on foot.
Not wanting to start the old debate, but it was interesting to see virtually no helmets being worn by cyclists in the city. Interesting because as of the start of the year Slovenia has introduced a law requiring all cyclist to wear one.
(Having just Googled, I wouldn't believe that this was true. In fact I would believe the contrary).
There is a one year amnesty - apparantly police will stop and warn you, but not charge you.
I wonder what effect this will have on the hire scheme, or perhaps there will be (or is) a city-exception to the law (e.g. cp. Mexico City for example)?
More generally, Ljubljana and Slovenia are nice places to cycle. We were on an organised tour (bikes and route provided, but not actually cycling in a group). The tour started off by going straight through the city centre. I can't imagine that happening in many UK cities.
Reasonably good cycling infrastructure in the city, although it did fall back to following a narrow strip of red tarmac down the pavement in places.
For the record, we took helmets. I left mine in the pannier the first day, but ended up wearing it after that.
Posted 12 years ago # -
Well if the international experience is anything to go by, the Ljubljana hire scheme will take a nose dive next year. In Israel they have just repealed their helmet law because it was it was killing their cycle hire schemes. In Australia, all of their cycle hire schemes are losing money hand over fist, and the Government is under increasing pressure to give the hire schemes an exemption. But then politicians never bother with evidence based policy do they.
Posted 12 years ago #
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