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Andy Burnham: “don’t throw Manchester hire bikes in the canal”


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13 minutes ago, MtB said:

Is it just me or do others here also think £17m for a bike scheme is having a laugh?

 

Yes, £17,000,000 according to the article.  Let's imagine there are 1,000 bikes. That's £17,000 for each bike. 

To be meaningful you would need the figures separated into amounts spent on what.   Looking at the photo there would appear to be a lot of shall we call it infra structure particularly for the electric ones.  I am sure quite a lot went on the inevitable studies.

 

Having said all that it does seem an incredible price, lets hope a decimal point wandered off course.

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The long term idea would be to make more of the city car free, which would presumably save money in maintaining roads as well as making it a less polluted place. Nice idea, saving the planet etc. Shame nobody really wants to, but it's only the ratepayers money, after all, and it's a lot more fun to organise than just getting the bins emptied.

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18 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

The long term idea would be to make more of the city car free, which would presumably save money in maintaining roads as well as making it a less polluted place. Nice idea, saving the planet etc. Shame nobody really wants to, but it's only the ratepayers money, after all, and it's a lot more fun to organise than just getting the bins emptied.

 

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SFW?

 

 

19 hours ago, john.k said:

Dont forget 10 million quid for consultants.......cant have anything now without consultants and reports!......might be a waste of public money!

 

If you don't engage expert help you are likely to waste far more public money. The necessary expertise does not exist in Metropolitan Borough Councils.

 

 

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20 hours ago, David Mack said:

Will also include the cost of 17 Beryl staff running round redistributing bikes over the 5 year contract.

 

 

Say £25,000 times 17 times 5: that accounts for well over two million quid. 

 

The £17,000 per bike represents capital and operating costs per bike for five years, and I would think thefts and losses have been factored in.

 

 

2 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Hire bikes are like supermarket trolleys. Irresistably drawn to throw themselves in the cut. A lot of the yellow Ofo bikes from a few years ago ended up in the Sheffield and Tinsley canal.

 

Depends on whether the hirers are easily traceable, does it not?

 

 

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1 minute ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

Depends on whether the hirers are easily traceable, does it not?

 

 

You'd have thought so, but the Ofo scheme involved just leaving the bike wherever you got to when you finished hiring it. GPS tracking, so they knew where it was. Once the hire was over and the bike lock automagically engaged, there is nothing to stop someone else picking it up and chucking it in the cut, or shielding the GPS and take it away to destroy, or disable the GPS lock and communications electronics. The last hirer is just going to say "Wasn't me".

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5 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

You'd have thought so, but the Ofo scheme involved just leaving the bike wherever you got to when you finished hiring it. GPS tracking, so they knew where it was. Once the hire was over and the bike lock automagically engaged, there is nothing to stop someone else picking it up and chucking it in the cut, or shielding the GPS and take it away to destroy, or disable the GPS lock and communications electronics. The last hirer is just going to say "Wasn't me".

 

Sounds as if there may well have been systematic flaws there, but I'm not party to all the details.

 

 

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1 minute ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

Sounds as if there may well have been systematic flaws there, but I'm not party to all the details.

 

 

It was an inherent problem with a dockless scheme. The schemes where you had to return a bike to one of a number of docks in the area mean that the bike is in a known place, possibly under the eye of a CCTV camera, when each hire ends. The dockless Ofo scheme meant that bikes were abandoned wherever someone got to, which could be miles away out in one of the less genteel parts of Sheffield. With the Manchester scheme that the King in the North is worried about, the electric bikes are presumably going to have charging docks they'll be returned to, so hopefully a better chance.

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There is theoretically still a bike hire scheme in Liverpool, but I can’t remember the last time I saw one in a docking station, let alone being ridden. What Liverpool does have at the moment is hundreds of rental electric scooters, the riders of which seem to have even less road sense than the cyclists.

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54 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

Say £25,000 times 17 times 5: that accounts for well over two million quid. 

Yes. And from the article its not clear if that is a total headcount of 17 staff, or if it is 17 staff on duty at any time, which would need a staff complement of something like 4 times that number. And probably only includes the on-the-ground staff, so some management/office staff to be added.

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6 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

I'm sure I can remember some fairly serious anti social hooliganism in some of the Germanic countries, not that long ago.

There have been protests regarding covid measures. Before that I remember large scale problems with migrant sexual attacks, presumably before they realised it wasn't acceptable in the culture they were living in. Other than those, can't remember. Have I missed something? 

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1 hour ago, The Welsh Cruiser said:

There have been protests regarding covid measures. Before that I remember large scale problems with migrant sexual attacks, presumably before they realised it wasn't acceptable in the culture they were living in. Other than those, can't remember. Have I missed something? 

Yup.

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