Susan Morrison: The electric bike hire adverts look great in Tokyo – not Leith


In pre-pandemic days Just Eat sponsored bikes for hire from docking stations around the city. Pre-launch photos showed neat rows of shiny bicycles ready to roll, next to trendy hipster types primed to leap into the saddle and bike to that 8.30 marketing meeting with Toby in Tokyo.
Yummy mummy models were pictured cycling through parks, then returning the bicycle safely to await the next pedal pusher. These easily available bikes, we were assured, would lead to an explosion in cycling.
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Hide AdMany a dream shatters when it meets reality, and this was no different. Oh, the young dudes with the designer beards might have whizzed about up town, but down here in darkest Leith, the bike boom was a bust.
The hipsters couldn’t get the bikes for one thing. Our local bike enthusiasts didn’t bother with docking stations and apps and returning bikes. They just wrenched them free of the stations, hurled about, then dumped them wherever they wanted.
Leith’s pavements became a graveyard of abandoned bikes. A simple stroll to the shops became an ankle threatening assault course.
Dodging downed bikes was the least of the hazards brought to us by our sponsors. No breezy biking through the parks for our lads. Why do that, when you can have even more fun zipping along a pavement, watching the pedestrians leap to safety? And those were the ones that could jump. No quarter was given to the wheelchairs or the buggies.
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Hide AdThey were a menace. Their removal from Leith prompted rejoicing.
The proposed new ones are electric. Great. That means they can join the silent high speed ski-masked delivery demons of Deliveroo, and the ninja bike boys with quite different cargoes.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully support city cyclists. Let's make life better for them, perhaps by improving the security for owners. Too many have their loved and expensive bikes nicked.
And how about putting the pedestrian first and making our pavements safer? Fixing them would be a start.
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