08 May 2009
Bike hire scheme is the wheel deal
The Common Bike project lets people hire a bike for $1.
Tutor Ben Landau, student Ben Hurt and Visiting Professor Ronald Haverman at the launch of the project.
RMIT University students have launched Common Bike, a Melbourne bicycle-sharing pilot initiative.
The three-week trial, which runs until 26 May, involves six bike hubs in the CBD and inner-city suburbs, where users can hire a bicycle for as little as $1.
Visiting Professor Ronald Haverman, who leads the project at RMIT, began a similar community-based system with three locations in The Netherlands a few years ago.
“It now operates at 180 railway stations with more than 60,000 customers,” Professor Haverman said.
“Common Bike will have a similar starting point and is as promising as the Dutch system.”
The Common Bike project, an initiative of students in the Bachelor of Design (Industrial Design) program, is modelled as a public system of transport that uses a collective of bicycles available from stations throughout the city.
Registration costs $5, with members paying just $1 per trip. An extra dollar is charged after three hours and for each additional hour beyond that.
The bikes come with a lock and a helmet and can be returned at any of the six hubs, stationed at Rentabike (Federation Square), Crumpler (Fitzroy), Commuter Cycles (Brunswick), Abbotsford Cycles and Lentil as Anything (Abbotsford) and Human Powered Cycles (Thornbury).
Industrial Design Tutor Ben Landau hoped the project would be taken into consideration in the Victorian Government's plan to provide short-trip bike hire in the city.
“We want to advocate bike sharing as a sustainable mode of public transport and show how simple and cost-effective such a community-based approach can be,” Mr Landau said.
“We hope this project has some influence on the kinds of proposals that come before the Victorian Government, so local businesses and local jobs are supported.
“Whatever form the Government’s bike hire scheme takes, it’s important that it’s not just a carbon-copy of something from overseas but that the scheme has been thoughtfully designed to meet the real needs of people living and working in Melbourne.”
The learning outcomes of the Common Bike trial will be discussed and assessed at a forum on June 15 at Docklands.
Lined up and ready for hire.
The launch was held at Rentabike, one of the Common Bike hubs, beside Federation Square.
Rosebank supported the trial by donating 20 helmets.
