Aberdeen Council could spend £10,000 from bus lane fines on free ebike rides for staff

Council officers think the move could help promote the Big Issue Ebikes rental scheme, which launched late last year but has so far received little council support

By Kieran Beattie

May 3 2023, 1:00 pm

The Aberdeen ebike hire scheme was rolled out in 2022. Image: Kieran Beattie/ DC Thomson.

Aberdeen councillors have been urged to spend £10,000 of your bus lane fines on free ebike rides for council staff.

Every year, the council generates huge sums of money from fining people for breaking bus lane and bus gate rules.

But all of this cash is ringfenced, and must be spent on transport or infrastructure projects.

These projects, for example, include improving paths for schools or replacing bus shelters.

The bus gate on Union Street. Image: Philippa Gerrard/DC Thomson.

For the 2023/24 financial year, councillors have been recommended to approve spending £1,873,591 from fines to take forward 26 different projects across the city.

One of these is committing £10,000 towards free hires for its staff with the Big Issue Ebikes rental scheme, which launched last November.

The local authority hopes by getting more people visibly out on the ebikes, it will help to “give a good impression of a successful scheme”.

How would it work, and what does the council think it will achieve spending your money on free bike rides for its staff?

Aberdeen’s rentable ebikes at the hire zone down at the beach. Image: Kath Flannery/DC Thomson

Staff would be given credit for hire times, allowing them to rent any of the hundreds of Big Issue Ebikes located in dozens of GPS hire zones throughout Aberdeen.

The council has not made clear any details on how many staff this would benefit, or how much hire time each staff member would be entitled to — only that it would be purchasing £10,000 worth of credit with the scheme if the proposal is approved.

Right now, users can sign up to a variety of payment methods for Aberdeen’s ebike hire project, including:

£1 for 7 minutes
£12 a day
£0.20 a minute
Or a monthly subscription of £19.95 a month which lowers the per-minute rental cost

Any ebike renters must take out ebikes and return them to designated spots scattered across Aberdeen, or have to pay extra.

The ebikes must be rented using a phone app, which uses GPS to show you where the parking zones are located in Aberdeen. Image: Kami Thomson / DC Thomson

In a report, officers say the £10,000 worth of hire credit would be of benefit to staff, who would be able to “use the bikes for site visits and other work-related travel, making them less car dependent”.

And in addition, they think it would help the council to “lead by example in promoting access to healthy, active, sustainable travel for staff, and encouraging use of the bike hire scheme”.

Officers also think by getting more people out and about on the bikes, it will make the scheme look good.

ebikes ready to be used in aberdeen — More than 200 ebikes are available for rent across the city. Image: Wullie Marr / DC Thomson

The report said: “If the public and businesses are seeing the hire bikes being used, this gives a good impression of a successful scheme and will likely encourage them to use.

“Similarly, if staff have the opportunity to try the scheme in a work setting, they may be more inclined to use it in their free time too.”

Council support for ebike scheme has been somewhat lacking so far

The scheme is being run by Big Issue Ebikes under contract with the council, and it finally launched in the Granite City in November, having been on the cards since at least 2018.

It’s a partnership between the Big Issue organisation that helps vulnerable and marginalised people, and the Norwegian bike hire company ShareBike.

Although the red and white ebikes bear the Aberdeen City Council emblem on their sides, it has so far been run at zero cost to the council tax payer, and the local authority actually has little to do with the scheme’s operation.

The ebikes all have the logos of Big Issue eBikes, as well as Aberdeen City Council, on them. Image: Wullie Marr/DC Thomson.

Questions have previously been raised by prominent members of Aberdeen’s cycling community about if the council is doing enough to support the project to help make it a long-term success.

At its launch, the Grampian Cycle Partnership said there was an “obvious lack of support from Aberdeen City Council”, and it raised concerns that it was being “set up to fail”.

The organisation questioned the lack of vocal support from the council.

In other cities across the globe, public bike share schemes are rightly lauded as a signal that their respective local…

Posted by Grampian Cycle Partnership on Monday, 7 November 2022

But with this push for spending £10,000 from the bus lane cash, it looks like council could be gearing up to give the cycle scheme a serious boost.

Jan Tore Endresen, CEO of Big Issue Ebikes, said he was not aware of the £10,000 proposal until we told him.

Jan Tore Endresen, CEO of Big Issue eBikes. Image: Wullie Marr/DC Thomson

But he believes it “sounds like a super way of moving from car to bike for work-related travel”, and thinks it would “of course be positive, as it supports the cause of micro-mobility in itself, and promotes sustainability.”