Citycycle, Crickey- designed to fail?

Image souce www.couriermail.com.au

Alan Davis the Urabanist for the online News site Cricky has written an article where the head line is "Is Brisbane CityCycle ‘designed’ to fail? ". In my opinion it is a resounding NO but I do agree with his sentiment in the second last paragraph,

It seems the objective was just to get a bikeshare scheme; but no one cared if it actually worked.
 

This statement I do fully agree with. It was an election pledge by our then Mayor now Premier that we would have a Public Bike hire scheme. As an election pledge they had to be installed and they were if not a bit ad-hoc with some stations being installed but not turned on. Other stations built at the end of the network while their nearby sister stations taking months before they were turned on. This resulted in less of a network of roots running out more like someone had just thrown seeds on the ground hoping it would in the end link up. This did nothing to fuel conference at the beginning.

There has been alot of focus on mandatory helmet laws but I prefer to look at what else needs to be done then bang my head into that brick wall. Alan Davis points to infrastructure principally the fact that he saw to people riding them on the footpath when the CBD street they were in was empty of cars. Infrastructure is one area the BCC has hopeless failed at in encouraging Citycycle. While the BCC did drop the CBD speed limit to 40kmph this is not much help when you are on a bike that is flat out at 25kmph and you have a bus on your ass, there needs to be infrastructure. This is the reason why those said individual were on the footpath. There needs to be two cycling spines through the CBD one down George St & one Down Ann St. This would allow Citycycles to be used in the City with conference and comfort. Honestly what is the point of it being called Citycycle when you don't want to use it in the City.

Alan also mentions the access problems. While as an out of towner I can sympathise he should try being a local. Currently the Citycycle does not work with GO Card. This is a major annoyance for locals such as myself as I do not use Citycycle enough to justify a membership but still want to be use it say once a month. This means each time I use Citycycle I have to log on and sign up for a One day membership. This is currently limiting it's usage because it means people that are outside the areas network don't use it because it may only be a once in a blue moon thing. "Once a blue moon things" need to be easily accessible, integrating with Go Card so the Registered Go Card Users had access would solve that problem.

There is not doubt that Citycycle is failing at the moment but I don't think it was designed to. I think this has got more to do with politicians not having the guts to install essential CBD cycling infrastructure & to work with there political foes to make an integrated public transport (& bike hire) system.