Urban Infrastructure Partner

A new city bike hire scheme is coming to Edinburgh, operated by Norwegian technology. Serco will introduce and operate the innovative cycle hire scheme, using software provided by the Oslo-based Urban Infrastructure Partner (UIP).

"We're providing both the backup systems for Serco to operate the scheme and the apps to unlock and lock the bikes," said Axel Bentsen, CEO of UIP in Oslo. This is the first time that UIP has won a contract outside Norway.

UIP has been running the Oslo bike scheme - providing the software and operating the bike scheme - in partnership with the City of Oslo for the last two years. Since then, bike usage has gone up by three times. Riders (not usually wearing lycra and often going to work) made 2.7m journeys in 2017. This compares with 9m taxi trips. In other words, a third of journeys in Oslo are now made by bike – and that’s in a city where snow makes the roads unusable for the best part of at least four months a year.

One of the new Edinburgh scheme's features will be UIP's innovative cycle lock, which is being used for the first time in the U.K. This allows users not only to dock at physical stations but if the docking station is full, to lock and leave the bikes in designated, geo-fenced parking zones. In Trondheim, for instance, where UIP operates the city bike scheme, if surplus bikes are left at the train station in the docking stations in the evenings, they can be safely left in the geofenced area.

The technology is so smart, thanks to the built-in GPS, that the operator can immediately see when there are too many bikes piling up in one location and quickly redistribute them. It also makes it easy to locate those bikes that are due for planned maintenance, which helps to improve operating efficiency and cut costs. Serco and Transport for Edinburgh (TfE) said that this technology will enable Edinburgh's users can benefit from the flexibility of a dockless system, without compromising the city's streets.

UIP

"We’ve made a tech platform to track and share assets and their location and service history," says Bentsen, "and we make this available to share. Through crunching and collecting data, we are able to ensure that the scheme operates as efficiently as possible."

Dockless bike schemes come with a cost: bike dumping. Bentsen said that dock schemes work better in large cities, because of the dumping problem. He concedes a few bikes may end up in the Oslo fjord each year, but by using smart data, better technology, and decent bikes, the Norwegian and Edinburgh bike schemes should be less vulnerable to this than has been the case in Asia, where bikes are cheaper and regarded as more disposable. Furthermore, UIP's ability to geofence its bikes outside the docking station makes them far more secure.

Bentsen sees UIP less as a software company - although the app that UIP designed won it the 15-year tender to operate the city's bike scheme - but a logistics one. In time, he says, UIP's unique software platform can be rolled out and applied across a variety of logistical systems.

One benefit UIP has brought to Oslo is helping to get people off an already overcrowded bus transport system and onto rental bikes. "When we won the tender, Oslo needed people to stop making short journeys on the bus. Other cities have the same problem; all over the world, buses don't come and then they form a line," says Bentsen. "You cannot add more buses, or more people onto the buses, so you have to concentrate on getting people off the bus and onto the bikes."

What surprised UIP in Oslo is how short the average journey times have been - eight minutes on average on the weekdays, 13 minutes at the weekend. "It's those extra minutes people save when they are late for a meeting," Bentsen said. "If they can save four minutes when they are running eight minutes late, they will."

In Edinburgh, 500 manual cycles will be delivered, with 200 operational by the start of the university term this August, and 100 electric bikes. By April 2019, there will be 600 bikes in operation but Serco and TfE believe the scheme will grow incrementally, driven by user demand. "To make a bike scheme sustainable over time, you have to work with the city," says Bentsen. "If you don't team up with the city, to have the best locations for the bike docks, then a scheme can't work."

Serco will use bikes made by its partner on the TfL scheme in London, Pashley Cycles, the longest-established British cycle manufacturer. In Oslo, UIP uses sturdy Czech bikes and is equipping them all with strong kevlar chains.

In UIP’s workshop across the main square from the central station in Oslo, CTO Johan Høgåsen-Hallesby explained to me that UIP believes the cheaper-bike model favored in Asia does not make as much business sense, because having bikes off the road because of unscheduled repairs reduces the efficiency of the fleet, and bike schemes are all about maximizing the fleet's efficiency. The most comparable schemes to Oslo City Bikes are Motivate in New York and Jump in Washington D.C. and San Francisco, he added.

In case you are a Scottish reader wondering whether a bike hire scheme used by fitness conscious Norwegians in the relatively flat environs of Oslo will work as well in Edinburgh on the way up the Mound or Calton Hill, well, here is some news. UIP recently carried out a three-week trial of its bikes in Bergen, whose steep hills and narrow streets make Edinburgh's Old Town look like East Anglia. The city transport authority was dubious as to whether people would really bike in Bergen - but the trial was so successful that the scheme will be introduced this summer, as well as in Trondheim where UIP has a 14-year contract.