Sheffield cycling: £9m e-bike hire plan to help cut city centre traffic by a fifth
A £9m e-bike hire service is set to launch in Sheffield in April to tackle congestion and help riders beat the hills.
The city council says the scheme aims to support hoped-for growth in the city centre and will be all e-bikes ‘to suit Sheffield's hilly topography’.
The authority is advertising a ‘Sheffield eBike Hire Scheme Soft Market Test’ worth £9.35m. It is set to run for three years from April next year.
The advert states the e-bikes will be hired from marked bays, racks or docks, to ensure efficient management and the safety of pedestrians and other road users.
It comes seven years after the Ofo yellow bike hire scheme ‘suffered from high vandalism and theft rates’ and closed after six months.
Electric Lime bikes have been a success in London where the number of cyclists has increased by 57 per cent in two years.
In Sheffield, council chiefs estimate there will be 18,000 new homes and thousands of new jobs by the 2040s.
To support this and tackle congestion, they want to ‘re-balance the limited street space’ towards the most space-efficient modes of transport: buses, trams, park&ride, walking, wheeling and cycling.
Several bike lanes have been installed in the city centre under the authority’s £10m Connecting Sheffield project. More are under construction or planned, including on Pinstone Street, Surrey Street, Cambridge Street and Castle Street.
The e-bike hire scheme was first mentioned in the City Centre Access and Movement Plan, published in summer, which looks at plans for transport in the city centre over the next 15 years.
It states the aim is to cut city centre traffic by up to a fifth, to make streets ‘more people friendly and prosperous’.