Brighton Bike Share Booming
How Many Bikes For Hire?
Brighton and Hove bike share has now been running for a couple years and is already a bigger success than was hoped for.
Wherever you go in the city you will see stands with bikes available to rent. They cost 3p a minute or £72 per year which allows you 60 minutes of ride time every day.
Lat summer I noticed a lorry collecting some bikes, to move them on elsewhere, and took the opportunity to chat to the manager.
Moving the bikes from one station to another is a full time job apparently and has to be done all day every day.
We were just returning from the Paddle Round The Pier Festival when we spotted the lorry and the pile up of bikes.
Many people had cycled to the festival, resulting in a glut of bikes at the station on Hove Lawns. The manager was busy collecting the surplus ready to move them to other depleted stations around the city.
Business is booming apparently.
Currently BTN Bike Share have 500 bikes a number they are wanting to increase. Already each bike is being used an average of 4 times a day, i.e. 2000 rides in total. As a comparison, in London they are only used, on average, twice a day.
Another advantage our local bikes have is that, if the stations are full they can still be locked and left in the vicinity, whereas, in London, if the bike station is full you have to cycle on to the next one.
This is the benefit of following on from the ones who have gone before! 😁
Brighton and Hove is an ideal place for a scheme like this as there is a cycle path right along the sea front, for many miles. In case you need any more motivation, the cycle from the train station to get to the sea is all down hill, so there's no excuse . . . Get On A Bike! 😁
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Those bike share things seem interesting. It's too bad the bikes don't make return trips very often. Still, one truck driving around all day is a lot less carbon than a couple hundred cars!
Nice pics, too. :-)
When I lived in Spain, the first thing I did was buy a cheap bike. It's not as easy to get around here in the northern USA (snow, ice, rain) but in Spain I could get anywhere with a bike and public transit.
It's like that in Brighton too. My card failed an MOT years ago and wasn't worth repairing so I never replaced it. I mostly walk or take the bus. I'm not so keen on bikes as it's so busy.
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