Article: Mayor pedals city bike scheme

[ozbob]

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Mayor pedals city bike scheme

Mayor pedals city bike scheme
Article from: MX

Ursula Heger

May 06, 2008 04:00pm

BRISBANE could see "bikes for hire" scattered about the inner city by the middle of next year under a new city council plan backed by Lord Mayor Campbell Newman.

Lord Mayor Campbell Newman said today that the idea, which could see up to 2000 bicycles available for public use in an area stretching from Newstead to the University of Queensland, would be similar to systems in European cities such as Paris and Barcelona.

The plan, which allows people to borrow a bicycle to travel a short distance and return it to any registered bike station, would cut down on pollution and congestion on Brisbane streets.

??In the future, I see bikes playing a much greater role in shorter-distance travel,?? Newman said. ??We are helping to encourage and speed that culture change by providing the infrastructure.

??What I expect is that people will see how easy it is to get around the city by bike and will naturally use the car less for quick trips down to the shops and other short journeys.??

He said the 150 bike-hire stations will be positioned about 300m apart across the suburbs, but not including CBD neighbour Springhill because of its hilly character.

Bicycle Queensland manager Ben Wilson welcomed the move, but said some parts of Brisbane?s bikeway system needed improvement to cope with the increase in cyclists.

??The northside is suffering from construction of the Northern Busway, which will close the hospital-side Bowen Bridge Rd for nearly two years. It is already a narrow road and most of the other side is taken up with the tunnel works.??

The idea has been successful in other cities, such as Lyon, where almost 150,000 car trips were replaced by ??bike for hire?? rides in the first six months of operation.

A council spokeswoman said the stations would not compete with tourist bicycle hire operations, which were designed for longer hire.

[haakon]

I am looking forward to this. It makes a nice range extender for the catchment area around the city train stations etc.