City bike hire schemes - emerging trends in Europe

This paper examines the recent increase in the uptake of city bike hire schemes and provides an analysis of the emerging trends that are being witnessed. The paper is based on an ongoing study into the spread and distribution in the adoption of bike hire schemes throughout Europe. The data collection consists of two stages that first seek to build a picture of the current situation before moving on to a more detailed discussion with the scheme adopters. The paper presents a brief history of bike hire schemes and describes the theoretical basis for the investigation, drawing on innovation and diffusion theory. It then reports the findings of the first stage of the research. This suggests that the expansion phase of city adoption of public bike hire schemes may be past its peak. The research also identifies useful relationships between city size and bike hire scheme size and explores the extent to which existing schemes have expanded or plan to expand. There appears to be evidence of regional differences in adoption which may be explained by the private sector providers that manage and co-develop many of these schemes.