Handlebar box of tricks unlocks share bike, no docking station required. System is cheap enough for small-scale share schemes.
Grand Scheme of Newcastle upon Tyne is the operator of the Scratch Bike city bike share scheme created for students on Tyneside and rolled out to all last year. Scratch Bikes are unlocked with text messages to a mobile phone; Grand Scheme uses a handlebar-mounted unit to release a bike lock key.
Scheme members punch their keycode into the handlebar box to release the key. The box contains a GPS chip and an accelerometer so Grand Scheme knows where bikes are and whether they are being moved without authorisation.
The handlebar box takes the place of expensive docking stations used by cycle share scheme such as those in Paris, London, and big cities in America.
Grand Scheme CEO Robert Grisdale said: "We think bike sharing should be accessible to everyone, not just the biggest, richest cities in the world.That's why, with our simpler technology and lighter infrastructure, Grand Scheme offers a brand new approach to bike sharing."
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Users do not have to worry about locating a free docking station at the end of their hire; bicycles can be locked anywhere within a 'geofenced' zone, sensed by the handlebar unit.
Later in the summer, a north eastern university will be the first to roll out with Grand Scheme handlebar boxes on campus-branded bicycles (the bicycles use standard frames and components).
The fully-working prototype of the Grand Scheme handlebar box arrived at the company yesterday. A number of localities signed up to the scheme after being shown photos and mock-ups.
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Photo below shows Grand Scheme's CEO Robert Grisdale, left, and chief operating officer Jack Payne.
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This is the newest iteration of the Call-a-Bike scheme which has been owned and operated by DB (German Railways) since 2002, when they bought out the original operator (started 2001). The original system had one key flaw, in the flexibility of places that bikes could be put off-hire, so that cunning user would use a bike and conceal it when they parked up so that they could return with the certainty of finding a bike for the return trip. This was remedied by Call-a-Bike'fix' in Stuttgart where there are defined places to park a bike when you've finished using it. A competing variant is Nextbike, which had a very limited number of locations where bikes could be found and hired and charged you relative to distance if you left a bike off-hire away from the official parking area. Scratchbikes have the added glory of being the UK's first bike hire scheme which is fully integrated with the local bus and car sharing schemes through a single point of 'access', thanks I suspect to the efforts of the late peter Huntley who had the foresight to offer free memberships of Scratchbikes and Commonwheels to anyone who bought the Go Northeast Keycard (40% discount on bus fares through paying electronically), and topped off the deal with putting credit to twice the value they got if you decided to scrap your old car and buy in to a bus, car or bike ready to go whenever you need one. Word is that Nexus Metro will soon be linked in to the Keycard payment system so that you can travel throughout Tyneside free from the burdens of car (and bike) ownership, yet enjoying all the benefits of their use. The neat detail about the bike mounted schemes is that they can be rapidly commissioned and reconfigured, and even placed temporarily for a big event. The downside is that the bikes are (or were) substantially more expensive than the dumb bikes with a chip identity plugging in to smart terminals, but in specifying the bikes as 'different, with features that keep maintenance costs down, you also reduce their value for theft, and the obvious misuse when a bike is seen outside its operating zone (which has been the detail of Copenhagen's scheme now in its 17th year - with maintenance funded by sale of the bike branding. Would be useful to talk to you guys next time I'm passing through Newcastle, given that I'm aware of a nuimber of places looking at Bike hire and Bike share schemes (Scratchbikes being more the latter) of various types. Dave H PS for you and other bike hire companies I've commented to several Train operators, about the page on the National Rail website "Cycling by Train" and the pressing need to completely revise the bit about bike hire and cycle hubs to reflect delivery of schemes like this in London Newcastle, Dumfries and Blackpool, with joined-up hire facilties (Oban-Fort William & Inverness rent here-leave there) and the commuter oriented Brompton Dock soon to be operating at around 15 'rail' locations
Dave Holladay May 3rd 2012 at 10:23PM
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