Sorry for the cycling theme at the moment, but this annoyed the hell out of me:
CYCLISTS will be charged up to $20 an hour to use Melbourne’s new public bicycle scheme when it is launched next year, with one critic saying it is doomed before it begins.
The steep price has won support from most transport observers, who say it will help keep trips short and ensure people do not keep bikes that are not being used.
But RMIT transport advocate Paul Mees criticises the scheme as a stunt used around the world when governments run out of serious policy ideas, and predicts it will fail as a transport alternative.
The bikes are free for up to half an hour, but the price goes up steeply to be up to $20 per hour after the second continuous hour. So if you wanted to take the bike for the day, it would be extremely expensive. But that’s not how they are used. People hop off the train (or out of their house), ride them to where they want to go, and drop them off again. Paul Mees seems to think that this won’t work – over that kind of time frame people may as well walk.
If Mees really believes this, I’ve got a challenge for him – nominate a date and time, we’ll meet at Flinders Street Station. He can walk or take a tram or bus, I’ll ride. Let’s see who gets to RMIT first.
Well, now. Here is something those Lycra clad poseurs could do to redeem themselves. Organise a cycle in take it over and refuse to pay.
Not difficult really, ditch the Lycra, do it in summer and ride naked and painted the way they do in some parts of the states.
http://www.michaelholden.com/pics/v/solstice/
and
http://solsticecyclist.org/
I think the threat of a repeat would win the day. Maybe not.
Huggy
I think to make this realistic you would have to use a cyclist that isn’t a very enthusiastic and fit recreational cyclist like yourself. We’re looking for solutions for everyone, not just the greyhounds, as I keep reminding people on this cycle threads some of us would love to be cycling just for the hell of it and also for the environmental benefits, but we do not have the youth and fitness to just use our strength to overcome obstacles.
FWIW I really dislike the public bikes idea as a “solution”; I’d rather VicRoads spent some serious money on making the CBD safe to ride in, then we’ll be happy to bring our bikes.
They’re wrong about needing to charge $20 to keep the trips short too. I’m sitting in a city where I think the charge is 2 euros after an hour, and people still don’t take long trips and there are also bikes everywhere. You just need to make the bikes big and heavy, and no-one is going to ride too far on them.
.
I think this will be a good test of the stupidity of the Melbourne public incidentally. Since this type of scheme works in so many cities (including some that are not exactly known for their placid nature, like Marseille), hopefully the bikes don’t get wrecked and vandalized so fast that the scheme does not work, unlike everywhere else.
I’m inclined to the view that the bike hire program won’t work here . i’m not even convinced of the business model in Paris. I reckon it’ll be a fizzer. The trams trains and walking work well here in the CBD of branch stackers central. I’ll certainly not be forking out for a treadly to get from Flinders St to The Redmond Barry room in my suit and tie and my trusty eeePC. OTOH if I had to get from Flinders down St Kilda Bvd regularly in peak hour I might run the risk of chain suck to my threads to beat the overflowing trams.
I tend to Helen’s view.
However in August I’ll be in Amsterdam and Rotterdam etc. I shall return a bloody expert on urban two wheel parambulating.
I fail to see how this scheme is going to work with Victoria’s compulsory helmet laws. People aren’t going to carry their own helmets with them, on the off-chance they might need to hire a bike; nor is anyone going to rent a helmet that would have been worn by half the population (eww, headlice).
If they want this to work, they’re going to have to make an exception to the helmet laws.
Helen is correct.
Safety and ease of passage are the salient issues for cyclists.
The other issue is that for regular users bicycles are a fashion accessory. These folks (including me) don’t want to ride some poxy generic bike.
One secret among several) for widespread bike use in Melbourne is to encourage the status aspects of bike ownership and use.
Good point, Paul. Will it work? I think that it will for a small group of people functionally, but commercially it will be dodgey. The problem will be that to “log off” posession, thereby cancelling the billing, the bikes will need to be racked at a destination stand. There are a lot of potential problems with this part of the process that will cause unacceptable costs to users thereby limiting the appeal on a once bitten twice shy leaning experience basis.
Katz @6: just shows how it takes all sorts. I’d be exquisitely happy on a daggy 3-speed tank if I was confident that I would not be mown down and if I didn’t have to wear a helmet. On the other hand, maybe that second ‘if’ is a fashion statement, after all?
In Victoria it’s against the law to rent headgear or gloves. Helmets are a huge issue with European young men.
The pricing per hour seems OK. The two problems are:
* Helmets – there will need to be an exception to the mandatory helmet laws (or they could be repealed totally)
* $50 upfront fee – this will be a major barrier to spontaneous users.
I’d rather they doubled the per hour fee and removed the $50 upfront fee.
That can’t be right Billie, here in Vic it is standard practice for horse riding outfits to rent helmets. I haven’t done other sports like rock climbing so can’t comment on those, but have definitely rented a helmet – or is it a kind of underhanded thing because it’s included in the overall price?
Most people who would want to rent bikes wouldn’t pay the upfront fee, at that rate you could take a cab.
Brisbane is getting a similar system with the same high costs despite substantial subsidy from the Brisbane council. It does include an even more expensive option that includes the provision of helmets. Does any one else wonder why the cost has to be so much higher than the cost of cheap hire cars or taxis?
There is also an incredibly expensive system that allows you to park your own bike and have a shower. OK for yuppies who want to make a statement but hardly part of a low cost logical system for extending the use of bikes or bike/public transport combinations.
At the moment, if you own a car, it is already cheaper to drive on my own in a 10litre/100 km car for 15km than to use public transport for the same distance. (As long as you don’t have to pay for parking.)
I have started using car and scoot as a way to go into town without having to pay for parking. The scooter is faster and cooler than walking. The scooter is an adult blade scooter. (2.5 kg, approx one metre long) Once folded it can be carried and stored anywhere that you would take a briefcase. Got the idea from my 40 yr old son who uses his scooter as primary transport in SanFrancisco. Says it makes a good impression to go to a meeting and park your scooter in the corner of the meeting room. However, what a sociologist can do to impress may be different than what would work for mere mortals.
JohnD, as soon as you say “if you already own” you’ve made the more expensive transport options cheaper. Assuming you regard the cost of owning a car as sunk rather than a per-kilometre cost, yes, cars can be a cheap option. But if you pro-rata the cost over the distance travelled things can look very different – my driver’s license costs around $10/km, for instance, and my folding bike about $2/km. At that point taxis and hire bikes start to seem reasonably priced.
By the same token, if you already own a helmet and bike the hire system looks quite silly.
One reason it’s so expensive is that they’re amortising the bike cost over a small number of hires. Well, they should be, as other schemes have had quite ridiculous theft rates (30%pa IIRC).
Incidentally, what’s the cheapest government issued photo ID that’s reasonable to carry? A passport is not, IMO, but a gun license is, just based on size and fragility. So while I need the passport, I don’t want to carry it everywhere.
fxh @ 4 – imagine the efficiency increases we could have if formal workplace clothing was abandoned – how about a move back to practical clothing?
Helen @ 11 – the other place people commonly hire helmets is at go-kart race tracks. I don’t see why they couldn’t have those disposable helmet liners available for those who don’t have helmets.
moz @ 13 – unless you have good access to shared car schemes or can afford to live in close to where you work/shop and family need to get to the fixed car costs are sunk costs for many because there are times when they really do need a car (having kids to cart around is one big blocker I think).
ooh ah no thank you – there are enough sloppy scruffs around without pandering to them
I’m surprised there’s anything a sociologist can do to impress. I’m not that surprised that the something they can do is to scoot a scooter.
Of course you can rent a helmet. But who would want to travel to RMIT?
This scheme assumes the only reason people are not riding is that they lack a bicycle.
By which reasoning, the only way we ended up with so many cars around is that the government provided cheap rental cars.
No. We got lots of cars because they were offered relatively cheap to buy, and because large amounts of public money were spent on dedicated roads for those cars, and laws shaped to make sure everyone got out of the car’s way and cars were easy to drive.
Bicycles are already relatively cheap to buy. Now spend large amounts of public money on dedicated roads for cycles, and shape the laws to make sure everyone gets out of the bicycle’s way and bikes are easy to ride, and people will ride them lots.
Oy, now I have to live up to not only Robert’s buns of steel but FX’s sartorial splendour. Oh well, I’ll ride on my own as my bike and I are incurably naff!
I’m also sitting in a city where they have a public bike rental scheme (Lyon/Villeurbanne) and it works just fine here. If you buy the annual subscription – about €14 last time I paid, from memory – your first 1/2 hour is free and you only pay a little for any time over that (nothing like $20 an hour). If you’re making a journey that’ll take longer than 1/2 an hour you’ll take the metro so most people I know never end up paying any more than their annual subscription.
One other thing we’ve got in Lyon/Villeurbanne (not sure about Paris) is the possibility to use the Metro card (transport card) as a dual public trasnport/bike rental card. The bonus here is that instead of 1/2 and hour free you get 1 hour free which means you can really take your time shopping. It also makes it easy to get off the metro and jump on a bike.
The problem I foresee for Melbourne has already been mentioned: the helmet. Whether you need to carry one with you or rent one when you get the bike it just creates inconvenience, one of the the very problems that the bikes are meant to overcome. While it’s possible the government could rule out helmet laws for those rent-a-bikes it would send a rather strange message. You and your friend could ride helmetless side by side and only the one who is riding their own bike is to fined? Inconsistent to say the least.
Chris@14: I think you have that backwards: once you commit to supporting a car you can only afford to live a long way out. We live in the Republic of Moreland, admittedly, but there are a considerable number of people here in $500k or cheaper houses with no car and two kids. Shaving $10k or so off your driving expenses lets you put half that into an expensive bike and the other half into your mortgage. In year two it all goes into the mortgage. Or the baby bonus buys the bike, as friends of mine have done.
Bikes that carry two kids safely and comfortably are now common and starting to appear very occasionally in the second hand market (new they’re $3k or more), but carrying more than that becomes an exercise in mixing the available options for most people (although $6k gets you a four kid-seater but you need a $500 trailer for the luggage). I have seen a tag-along with a two-child trailer behind it, but that scared me. All more practical in Melbourne than Sydney, for the most part, unless you spring an extra $1000 for an electric assist system.
Helmet laws are even sillier for recumbent “bikes”[1] with more than two wheels. While it’s theoretically possible for me to “fall off” my quad and hit my head on something, I’ve only tipped it once and by that stage I had slowed from 50kph down a hill to ~10kph over the kerb in the side street (helped by a near-blind motorist who fortunately couldn’t get his story straight for the cops so I didn’t even have to turn up to court). It’s much more likely that something will fall onto my head, a risk shared by anyone standing outside (or in an open-top car).
[1] legally a “bicycle” is a human-powered device with one or more wheels and less than 200W of power assist, with caveats about toy vehicles. So a pedal-powered road train would count as a “bicycle”.
Hi everyone. Sorry for lack of replies, was kind of busy (film at 11, short version, I made it).
Helen, yes, I’m faster on a bicycle than 97-98% of the population. However, that’s pretty irrelevant in Melbourne’s CBD. The limiting factors are the traffic lights and whether you’re prepared to take risks weaving through the traffic (I’m not). Even doddling along at 15 km/h, you’ll be at least twice and probably three times as fast as a walker.
I agree helmets are a potential problem.
As for the fashion accessory issue, for most people I suspect the convenience factor of the public bike schemes will greatly outweigh the pose factor much of the time. You would not believe the dunger bicycles people get around on in places like Copenhagen or Cambridge.
moz @ 20:
Depends on how expensive the car you buy is
Seriously though I think there’s some truth to that, though for many they can only afford to buy a house a reasonable way out or they put a higher priority on having a reasonable sized backyard for their kids to play in and aren’t high income earners. Or they end up with a job with a bad commute.
Thinking back on when I was at school although we lived fairly close to the city and school there would have been now way we could have gone to all the outside of school things getting around just on a bike. You’d either have to be really lucky or restrict what your children do to things which are close by and don’t let them learn to play large bulky instruments like cellos
We have a wee-ride we take our daughter around on to places close by, but its not something we use in the rain or in 40C weather. So even for those who want to ride as much as possible you need a backup – for many like us, thats a car.
I just thought i would share this with people ‘coz it amused me, putting it in the closest cycling related thread I could find:
Funny – but did you note that at the very start, his bike has triple cranks and mountain bike pedals?
Funny – because you noticed it.
No, I’m not a bike nerd
Big deal Wilful. People routinely spend more than that on a wrist watch. Spending more on less is something we will all be doing increasing in the future, as a matter of necessity. The piece of software I use for design work cost $12,000. CD Weight? 20 grams.
A lot of people don’t use bicycles for health and “arriving in a ball of sweat” reasons. We need to start talking about electric assist bicycles that can be used to overcome both these problems. Last time a looked a portable version with a battery range of about 30 km, speed of 30 km/hr would cost about $1500 new with lithium battery or $400 second hand. The power can be used to help up hills or to allow you to arrive at work cool, calm and collected. The pedals can be used to provide an excersize level to suit or to get a sweat up when riding home from work.
Good point John D. I was just this morning talking with neighbours who I see only occasionally (because they are off on cruises…a lot), both English origin, and the wife was talking about push bikes with motors on that were extremely common when she was young. I should point out that these are illegal under Australian law. What fools we are.
And the bikes that you are talking about, I should have added, which are usually powered at 750 watts to 900 watts are also illegal. Try importing one complete!
My sister has an electric assist kit on her bike, it’s a good little unit, but quite heavy, I think she ended up getting a lighter bike…I don’t even know that she bothered putting the assist kit on it, she just realised that cycling was more pleasant when she wasn’t pedaling around a clunker. I don’t think she rides very efficiently, I talked to her about the way she uses gears and she seems to have it all wrong. I don’t know why people who are good drivers, don’t seem to understand the use of gears on a bike to maintain ‘revs’.
I think a lot of the “ball of sweat” thing is a beatup too. Normal commuter riding just doesn’t make you stink like all the people who grew up in cars 24/7 imagine.
Well here is one bike power assist that is both light and legal, though perhaps barely affordable.
http://www.gruberassist.com/category/englisch/