Melbourne has officially launched its bike share scheme. Huzzah.
Melbourne Bike Share is your new caring sharing way to bike about Melbourne at the drop of a hat, sorry, helmet. Actually, sorry, you have to bring your own helmet and, oh, did I mention, you need to a deposit if you want to borrow the bike, I think it’s maybe about $300, and it’ll take about four to six weeks for your subscriber pack to arrive and RACV take no responsibility if you’ve filled in the form wonky and your pack gets misplaced in the mail, and I hope you have a credit card and like internet instructions, because MBS has lots of them for you to get funky with.
If, however, you are a large corporate organisation with several offices located around the CBD and you are prepared to invest in a cluster of helmets (I suggest your corporate colours) as a team building/corporate social responsibility/sustainability/greenwash endeavour, this may be the scheme for you.
You could also try the Humble Vintage Bike Hire Co, who I believe are still having their weekday weather specials, where your rental is as low as the mercury!
Either way, I was toddling around the city all day today and I didn’t see one blue bike at all, so fingers crossed someone navigates through the scheme because I’d love for a helpful, useful, daily bike hire system to be running Thundercats Are Go in the CBD.
I guess I’m just so completely surprised it seemed impossible to get helmets dispensed with the bikes. If the Japanese can get everything from umbrellas to fresh eggs out of a vending machine, I don’t know why the technology is beyond us to provide some sort of locker system for helmets? Surely the good people at Rosebank are more than quiet enough to have been commissioned to design a signature Melbourne lid?
Am I asking too much?
(Photo: Wayne Taylor via The Age)
eleanor j jackson 
I saw one being ridden at lunchtime. Quite wonky and no helmet.
See! How can this be a good system? Surely a very smart matching helmet would have been better? And why that super civic blue? Even melbourne’s ubiquitous black could have been updated with nifty crimson trim for stain resistant practicality. Or de-detailed chromes and silvers? Just little bullets of efficiency trundling through the city. These little blue jobbies look like something Microsoft would commission. Or a promotions firm spruiking a ladies gym. These do not say Paris chic to me. And, i wonder if you raise a congestion tax or something and radically improve bike transport, perhaps nominating entire carriages of trains as friendly zoned with space to park and still stand up, if you made this bike heaven, then commercial entities would run small hire schemes anyway… My god, I’m ranting.