Citycycle - the past fortnight

A citycycle loaded up with my Christmas Shopping last year

The past month has been interesting one for Citycycle.
What is possibly the most surprising for me was the locking of the courtesy helmets onto the bikes by citycycle staff. I have posted in the past as one of the reasons why they are continuing to loose these helmets to theft is due to increasing numbers of them being left in the bike's baskets. Now this can easily be done by mistake when you pull up at a station and forget to place the correctly before docking the bike. The problem was getting worse by the staff not correcting this when they cleaned the bikes. Due to this reinforcement not occurring more helmets were being left in baskets and users were getting more lax with it. Viscous cycle! This is why when I was walking home past a station I was blown away to see one worker cleaning the bikes will the other locking the helmets to the bikes. I have to say it looked very simple. He scanned his card on the bike dock, pulled the bike out, correctly placed the helmet over the mounting arm and pushed the bike back in. All I could think of at the time was why has this not been occurring every time since the courtesy helmets became available. Never the less it is an improvement and I can only hope it continues as it just looked so simple!

Another welcome development is an ABC Local Radio piece asking as to weather Citycycle needs extended hours of operation. I have to say personally I think it is ridiculous that it has restricted hours of use. It has personally limited my use of the service. What I found most interesting was councils excuses.

1. The Contractor suggested it
2. It would create noise from people milling around the station
3. Only 2% of use is between 9pm and 10pm

I found all these reasons quite pitiful. I honestly don't know how much observation the councillor has done of Citycycle stations but most people turn up, get/drop there bike and go. You would get more noise from the local Bus Stop where people have to wait for the transport. Most people are not milling around! As for the 2% usage well that is in line with most services during there last hour of operation. Using his reasoning Public transport would be truncated to an earlier hour due to the low patronage in that last hour of usage, or a store would close. The fact is this extended hours of usage is about reassuring patrons that the service is there when they need it as that increases overall usage. This is what should also occur with Citycycle, patrons need to be reassured that it is there for them and the early closure time does not do this.  Most importantly the councillor admitted it would cost no more to have extended hours of operation so why not? Patronage is still vastly below expectations it is not even breaking an average of 1 trip per bike yet so something needs to change. Even a small increase in usage would be an improvement over the status qua.

Both of these topics are encouraging and things need to change to improve both the service and the patronage.