Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Melbourne Bike Share scheme


On 1 July 2010 Melbourne opened the first 10 of the Bike Share stations in the Melbourne CBD with 100 bicycles available, as reported by the Herald Sun. By the end of the year 50 sites will be operational and 600 bicycles available. The first stations are provided along Swanston St from the University to Flinders Street.
The service is operated by RACV - an interesting expansion of their area of interest.
The helmet question is once again a sticking point. Users need to bring their own helmet or buy one from a retail outlet nearby.
I hope someone (other than the police) will be monitoring how users of the Bike Share use of helmets as it is probably the Achilles heel for Bike Share in Australia. Maybe I will be proved wrong and everyone will use a helmet, but I have my doubts. Enforcing helmet use will most likely reduce the use of the Bike Share. But this is just conjecture - some research on this would be good.

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