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news
Andy Burnham Bee Bikes Manchester (Andy Burnham/Twitter)Andy Burnham urges residents to not chuck hire bikes in canals
Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham has asked residents to not chuck the city's £17m rental scheme bikes into the canal. Burnham admitted feeling nervous about the scheme opening later this month and hoped that people would treat them like their own bikes.
The last attempt at a bike hire project in the city, run by Chinese firm Mobike, ended with hundreds of bikes in the city's canals each month, while others were hung from lampposts or stolen.
Burnham told the Guardian: "I would just say to people: these are your bikes, we own them. So, please look after them. Damaging your own stuff doesn’t make sense."
He also emphasised they are Bee Bikes, not 'Burnham Bikes', ahead of the scheme's imminent launch on 18 November.
The bikes are owned by Greater Manchester but will be operated by Beryl for the first five years, the company behind bike hire schemes in several UK cities such as Norwich and Bournemouth.
Burnham has committed to 1,500 bikes, including 300 e-bikes, available to users across Manchester, Salford and Trafford by next summer and, if successful, there are plans to expand the project across Greater Manchester.
Here you go - your new “Bee Bikes” which will be on our streets from November. 👇🏻
Many will be e-bikes and, in time, part of a single integrated payment system across bikes, buses and trams.
Greater Manchester’s Bee Network is taking shape 👍🏻 pic.twitter.com/JG4ZZdIqAO
— Andy Burnham (@AndyBurnhamGM) June 22, 2021
Greater Manchester’s first Transport Commissioner Chris Boardman also expressed anxieties about the prospect of vandalism but stressed this scheme is far better prepared than Mobikes.
"Vandalism is something that you don’t have control over," Boardman said, before explaining the scheme was planned alongside Greater Manchester Police, unlike Mobikes that were "dumped on the street" at short notice.
It will cost 50p to unlock a bike and 5p per minute of cycling, or £1 to unlock an e-bike and 10p a minute to ride.
Earlier this week it was announced that Nextbike UK would be halting its bike hire scheme in Cardiff due to a "staggering" level of theft and vandalism.
300 bikes were stolen – 130 of those since August this year alone – and a further 260 had to be scrapped due to vandalism, including being dumped in rivers or set on fire.
"Our teams simply cannot keep up with the level of damage and theft being carried out," the brand's UK Managing Director Krysia Solheim said.
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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24 comments
When they talk about bikes being dumped in canal, stolen etc - is this off the bike racks themselves?
I used the bike scheme in Belfast last month, and it was excellent. All done through an app, where they charged £5 to a card just to register you. To rent a bike and release it from the bike rack, you had to scan a QR code in the app. So you couldn't then take a bike and dump it, they knew who you are and had your bank info.
The only downsides for me were that I didn't have a helmet to wear and the 2 bike shops I tried wouldn't rent any, and that not being entirely sure where we were going initially meant lots of stopping to follow googlemaps on the phone, and it would often direct us the wrong way up 1-way streets, through the pedestrian precinct etc, we had to mount the pavement a couple times. It was almost encouraging what I consider poor cyclist etiquette (and pisses off drivers & pedestrians).
The bikes were decent too - assisted drive, 3 gears, bit heavy but I was still able to do bunny-hops.
But with lots of places to park, and a pretty good interface, I really didn't understand why it couldn't be a success.
Compare it to the scheme they tried in Edinburgh where some of the bike parks were way out of the way, bikes not great quality, not enough parking points at stations - it was just poorly designed and considered in the first place. It should have supplemented the train and tram service and been the veins running out from the tram route being the main city artery, but in fact it was just utterly random.
I think the Mobikes were a 'leave anywhere' type scheme, so there was no need to take them off a rack - they could just be swiped from wherever the last user left them.
Those prices would be about 5 times the cost of me getting the bus to work. They seem more realistic for short commutes, but then more limited in usefulness since the target market could just walk.
Andy Burnham: "Now go away and don't think about bananas".
Hmm... I think I see a problem right there. As far as I'm aware the ones that have "worked" (e.g. not just worked their investors) have been the bigger operators who've been able to successfully partner with local authorities longer term. I wonder whether Mobike are still on the tail end of the "flood the streets with bikes" business model - largely coming out of China - that was widely disparaged a few years back:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/25/chinas-bike-share-graveyard-a-monument-to-industrys-arrogance
In 2019 Mobike were losing bikes hand-over-fist (or -bar?):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50946871
It's early days for the UK and anything cycling-based (I hope!) but I see these working best where they're not "dockless" e.g. there's substantial infrastructure and ideally the bikes are normally in a "known" location where they can more easily be maintained / are less likely to be stolen.
I think it's often the way that our authorities are keen to get it cheap and happy not to plan to keep spending money on maintenance. It's the Sam Vimes economic theory again!
Outside of a few tourist-focussed major cities (e.g. London) I suspect that bike share would work best with something looking more like the Netherlands' OV-fiets scheme. Their scheme is national, the bikes are based at stations (possibly bus stations too?) and the idea is you make your journey and have the option of "last few miles" transport from your destination station. However this would need a huge increase in cycling here (Abelio tried it in Scotland and it didn't fly - or rather roll). I suspect that the UK is probably socially and politically incapable of the centralisation this would benefit from.
Thoughts from Cycling UK and Sustrans on these, for what it's worth:
https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/guide-hire-bikes-and-public-bike-share-schemes
https://www.sustrans.org.uk/our-blog/policy-positions/all/all/our-position-on-public-cycle-share-schemes
In Derby it was 4 fucking scrotes who screwed up the bike hire programme for everyone else. 4 mindless knob-heads!!
It doesn't take much to derail these schemes. It looks like Manchester are perservering. Here in Derby the scheme has been suspended, but I doubt it will ever return again.
I know bike prices have been going up a lot recently, but I think they've been had there.
At 11k per bike they might all be Pinarellos!
Or
more likely, that 17 million is the total cost over a few years for infrastructure/maintenance/running the scheme and so on.
Good luck Manchester, Santander bikes have been a big hit in London
It is ironic. One of the known big obstacles to more bicycles being used on short utility journeys is the well founded fear of having having the expensive bicycle stolen or damaged.
So how is providing more-expensive bicycles at greater risk of theft and vandalism supposed to address the problem? It seems bonkers to throw bicycles at the problem before tackling the issue of theft and vandalism that existing cyclist face.
"what we've come to expect when the public sector get involved in procurement" - ah, you mean like all our Covid tests / PPE which were supplied cheaply and efficiently by a few private firms?
Hang on though - you're saying the reason we don't have mass cycling is bike theft? I'm confused, only recently you were saying cyclists were the barrier to cycling (and driving), filling the roads and offending everyone with their entitled attitudes and misogynistic taunts? It's truly unfair because as you've observed they are both fat and slow and over the hill but somehow also terribly energetic when it comes to getting out rather than the lazy majority who aren't cycling.
Or could it be that most people don't actually care what the current tiny number of cyclists are doing? Could it be that they aren't cycling because it doesn't seem to be a social activity because their friends aren't doing it? Because it doesn't feel safe? That quite rightly people want convenient cycling with direct routes (not shared with lots of speedy motor vehicles) and secure places to store their bikes next to their destination, not round the back in an unlit alley smelling of liquid boredom? Because it is in practice not encouraged by our lords and masters because they don't actually spend much cash on it. And it's not supported by our culture, being sneered at when it's considered at all?
You're like the rest of us - a outlier to the mainstream. Having the police nab some bike thieves would be great but it ain't going to change our cycling rates. Because most bikes in the UK are barely being ridden outside of occasional recreation.
I would pay good money to see you saying that in front of my old rugby front row teammates. I feel sorry for you Nigel, you spew hate against so many different types of people, you've clearly got some very serious issues that need addressing as soon as possible.
Let me return the favour:
It would be our current government who actually initiated the circumvention of the processes at the Department of Health and (like Jo Churchill) had to admit that er... they hadn't followed procedures (their "8 stage process"). Coincidentally this happened most with companies run by their pals (one Ayanda Capital was put into the "VIP lane" and it just so happened that its representative was an adviser to Liz Truss). Even more strangely that led to them paying vastly over the odds for stuff, some of which didn't even work. This would be the same government which has also happily let the situation persist where such companies can quietly hide the money away from scrutiny and indeed tax.
It looks less like "we didn't have time for full scrutiny" and more like "a profligate waste of public money" wouldn't you say? Maybe "what we've come to expect when the government interfere in procurement"?
Hmm, OK, let's look at the Netherlands, there are tons of bikes there so that'll show up the issues! Far more people cycling there than the UK and most are "utility cycling" (I feel duty bound to inform you some are actually enjoying it, cycling next to their friends and talking together and indeed some are not even making a "journey" at all but are just going about for pleasure). How can that be as they don't even tend to use particularly great locks? So presumably they must have super cops in The Netherlands? Or are those people constantly losing their bikes and buying another stolen one? Or are they just such Communists there that the proletariat have actually given up theft as counterrevolutionary? Or maybe their bikes are all rubbish and no self-respecting thief would tarry long in the place?
Back to the UK - are you saying that thousands would be down to Lidl on their 50 quid bike-shaped-objects but for the fact they're terrified of losing them? Or maybe they all did but all the bikes were stolen that evening (and went where?) so that's why I don't see mass cycle usage?
It's also odd because I see quite a few bicycles stored on the balconies of the flats around me, and yet I almost never see those bicycles in use - indeed they don't move from one month to the next. Maybe they're just frightened of thieves as you say?
Or could there be another reason why they're not cycling?
I think we could do better on cycle theft, same as with actually penalising illegal and dangerous driving more often. What that won't do is increase our cycling modal share above the few percent we have currently. It won't bring all those men, women, children and the old back onto bicycles!
Hmm... what you seem to be doing there is exactly what you say you're not.
" it would be prejudicial to assume that is the case." So why bring it up at all then?
"all I'm saying is that "danger" is overstated" - it is indeed a fact that cycling - even in the UK - is a very safe activity. However people need to feel it is safe and see it is convenient.
"If you removed the dangers and built the best infrastructure in the world, many people would simply move on to the next best excuses on the list, which would be "weather" and "theft" or similar."
Fortunately chance has given us some "natural experiments" we can look to. We have a couple of places where thay have indeed built excellent infrastructure, which have similar weather to the UK or much colder or hotter. And it turns out that they cycle rather more. We can also look at Bern, in Switzerland - rather hilly actually. Still looking pretty good for modal share.
Our problem is our politicians campaigned for and subsidised motorised traffic for decades and they still do. Most people in the UK quite sensibly stopped cycling. We are all so focussed on the car and motorised transport that even we "avid cyclists" still naturally assume that the car comes first / should be able to go everywhere and park anywhere - and ignore the needs of those who can't own / drive vehicles. Plenty of people do want to ride bikes (see first lockdown) but they aren't going to do so when it doesn't feel safe, convenient or even "normal".
17 million is peanuts compared to just about every road/driver specific infrastructure scheme ever completed or currently planned.
And the private sector is provably less efficient in sooooooooooo many industries - yet still get massive tax payer subsidy despite the Cayman Island tax scams used by all involved.
You're on the wrong side of history here.
Hang on Nige, I'm sure you have said before that children shouldn't cycle on the roads as they didn't have enough training
He says he's polite and courteous, he doesn't say he's consistent!
Honestly, he would be better ignored. I just don't read his posts.
When I see 20 comments I'm interested to read them, but then I see what it is and I scroll right to the end.
You're right, I should stop using his bait as a hook to hang my own obsessions on and leave it to Nasal Forage!
I'm trying to tell myself that it's just mediocre satire and move on.
It wasn't that pointless and illogical comment from you Nigel, it was quite a while ago when you said anyone who lacked skills should not be on the road.
You lost me at 'any competent parent' an extremely demanding, lifelong career choice which requires no qualifications, whatsoever....
I think Burnham has been misreported. His actual words (apparently) were, "Please, they are not Burn'em Bikes".