The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Dundee e-bike scheme pushed back to spring
Series of hitches see plans put on hold until 2020 as applications lodged with council
The introduction to Dundee of a largescale e-bike share scheme has been delayed.
The city is set to welcome a fleet of about 350 e-bikes. Charging stations will accompany the project and they are expected to appear across the city in the coming months.
Organisers Ride-On say it will be one of the biggest of its kind in the UK. The firm has similar schemes in mainland Europe.
The project was expected to go live in late summer or early autumn this year, but after hitches with some of the stations, a decision was made to delay the launch until spring.
It is still hoped a “soft launch” will take place through the winter, with a handful of bikes being available to trial.
Steven Pyer, general manager of Ride-On, said: “We are going to continue putting in planning applications over the coming months so we have as large a network as we can.
“There are a lot of employees and businesses really looking forward to this.
“It’s a shame it won’t be ready this year, but we will do our best to make sure everything is in place for early next year.
“When some things like this launch and it’s not quite ready, people lose interest and that can be difficult to regain. I hope that by launching in a big way in the spring with everything right, people will be fully engaged with it and remain so.”
A series of planning applications have been lodged with Dundee City Council but some of these have been subsequently withdrawn.
Steven added: “There have been a few examples of where we put the planning application up and people have raised legitimate concerns, so we have just withdrawn them.
“We don’t necessarily have to do that when there are just a few objections on the application, but we want to keep everyone happy so took them down and looked again.”
One hub was to be near the Dundee High but some parents felt it was too close to the school.
BrewDog launched a petition to have a docking station on Panmure Street moved after the application appeared to show it on their beer garden.
Both parties came to an amicable agreement, with Ride-On saying the drinking area was never the intended home of the hub and the plans were redrawn.
We will do our best to make sure everything is in place for next year. STEVEN PYER
Acompany bringing to Dundee one of the largest e-bike hire schemes in the UK is right to delay its launch until infrastructure is firmly in place. This could be one of Tayside’s largest contributions to zero-emission Scotland and is desperately needed in areas of particularly high pollution.
To launch before it is ready could prove fatal to the longterm ambitions of the project.
Get it wrong and it could be dismissed as a passing fad. Get it right and it could spark a green travel revolution.