Public bicycles a green way to get around town

Bike hire trial hoped to be template for wider scheme

• Kate Lahey, The Age
• May 4, 2009

PUBLIC bicycles will be available in the inner-city from this week under a project aimed at creating a uniquely Melbourne model for the scheme.

The Common Bike public bike hire system is separate to the one the State Government is to promise $5 million for in tomorrow's budget, although its organisers hope it will help shape the larger, official model due to start next year.

The three-week trial, offering 30 bikes from five sites, is being run by RMIT industrial design students under visiting professor Ronald Haverman and tutor Ben Landau. Mr Haverman helped establish a similar not-for-profit scheme in the Netherlands, OV-fiets, which he says now operates at 180 rail stations and caters for about 60,000 members.

Roads Minister Tim Pallas will call for tenders for the larger scheme this week and has said the Government wants an organisation that has run a similar scheme successfully in a comparable city.

Other overseas schemes have attracted large advertising firms, such as JCDecaux in Paris.

Mr Landau said the RMIT public bike scheme, which starts on Wednesday, would show how such a system could work in Melbourne as a community program by returning profits to local businesses, such as bike shops willing to act as hire stations.

Membership is $5 and each trip after the first requires a gold coin donation. The RMIT group does not plan to bid for the tender but will hold a forum on its results in June.

Mr Haverman said public bike hire would be good for Melbourne: "I think it's good for the very spread-out suburbs, the low-density areas, you need bike stations almost everywhere."

The sites chosen for the pilot are Rentabike@Fedsquare, Abbotsford Cycles, Lentil As Anything in Abbotsford, Crumpler in Fitzroy and Commuter Cycles in Brunswick. Helmets will be provided with each bike.

Other great rides here like around the bay in a day