An options appraisal is being undertaken by Aberdeen City Council to investigate the potential development of a bike hire scheme.
The options appraisal will help to establish if there is a suitable bike hire model which could work in Aberdeen, and members of the public and stakeholders will be able to help shape it.
There are two parts to the appraisal, with the first being engagement with stakeholder groups such as cycling groups and community councils, and the second will be an online public consultation at a later date.
Aberdeen City Council transport spokesman councillor Ross Grant said: “It is very exciting that we’re at this stage now for a potential bike hire scheme.
“We’ve had many people asking about the potential for one in the city and it’s great we’re at the start of the formal consultations with interested organisations and the public.”
A stakeholder workshop will be held at the end of this month to help gather views on the problems and opportunities for implementing a bike hire scheme, and for stakeholders to express what they would or would not like to see in terms of an initial option generation exercise.
The results of both the stakeholder workshops and the public consultation will help to identify a preferred bike hire option for Aberdeen. At a later stage, elected members will be asked to approve the recommendations stemming from the bike hire scheme options appraisal.
If a bike hire scheme gets committee approval, it would be one of several measures aimed at encouraging more people to cycle or walk by providing more infrastructure as part of the Active Travel Action Plan for the city.
This work is part of the Civitas PORTIS project – a four-year European project designed to test and measure innovative and sustainable urban mobility projects in five European cities. The partners for the project also include Aberdeenshire Council, Nestrans, The Robert Gordon University, the University of Aberdeen and Aberdeen Harbour Board.
The solutions include innovative approaches for sustainable urban mobility and social and functional connections between city centres and ports using for example digital technologies which will improve both governance methods and the information provided to the citizens as well as the access to new, services, already available or to be invented.
Civitas Portis has received 100% funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and it started on September 11, 2016 and finishes on August 31, 2020.