Bike hire scheme a light in the gloom

With continuing gloom over the state of Calmac’s ferries and further summer airport disruption forecast, it’s great to highlight a pretty much unqualified transport success story.

I’m talking about Glasgow City Council’s booming cycle hire scheme – along with positive vibes from its Edinburgh counterpart, which I’m told is “very optimistic indeed” it can finally revive a rental system in the capital.

On past trends, you’d think that Edinburgh, not Glasgow would be the shoo-in for a mass bike hire scheme.

But no. While Edinburgh belatedly followed Glasgow in launching a scheme only for it to collapse after just three years, Scotland’s largest city has repeatedly expanded its operation, which will soon celebrate its tenth anniversary after being established ahead of the Commonwealth Games in June 2014.

The number of its bikes has nearly trebled from 400 to 1,189, including 159 electric models. They are also now available across more of the city, with the number of hire stations almost quadrupling from 31 to 113.

That impressive growth is topped by the rental figures – an astonishing 500,000 last year to a total of 2.5 million to date, with riders clocking up around 31,000 miles a month.

As city council transport official Josh Maclehose put it at a webinar last week hosted by shared transport body COMOUK: “The scheme is growing quite substantially and demand for the bikes is exceptional.”

This has been fuelled in part by Glasgow’s growing off-road cycle network, which is due to grow by another 170 miles over the next decade. It would be even more beneficial if it was better signposted and maintained.

I’ve found the nextbikerun, Ovo-sponsored scheme pretty straightforward, with an easy to use app and hires from £1 for 20 minutes, while staff are usually prompt at sorting problems via the messaging function.

I find it extraordinary that Edinburgh has been without a scheme for three years after the operation run by original London scheme providers Serco ended over funding in the face of significant vandalism problems.

But I hear there may be positive news in April, with two firms – Lime and Dott – offering a service at no cost to the council. Fingers crossed it’s second time lucky.