Every couple of blocks, there are bike stands. You pick up a bike at your nearest bike stand, ride to a stand near where you want to be, and leave the bike there. It costs $2.80 for a 24-hour membership that includes as many trips as you want – so long as they are all under half an hour. If a trip takes longer, an extra half hour costs $2, a third half hour costs $5, and each half hour after that costs $10. They want lots of people taking lots of short journeys.
Apart from the initial wobbles, which were not helped by my failure to adjust the seat, the bike works fine. Nothing flash, just three speeds. And a bike lane next to the bike stand, heading in the direction I want to go. All good, until the bike lane ends at Bourke Street Mall and a no-bikes sign. Oops. Not for the only time, I rode where perhaps I shouldn’t have. Mostly, I managed to stick to bike paths and quiet streets – both more common in Melbourne than Sydney. That Melbourne streets are laid out in a grid also helps, I only need to count how many blocks east-west and north-south – something else I struggled with and I overshot regularly.
After three trips between the same points, the physical wobbles had gone but the navigation wobbles remained – I still hadn’t found a route I was comfortable with. Most drivers were bicycle friendly, but it only takes one. Nor was I sure Melbourne’s pedestrians were safe from me. I gave up, and took the tram.
Melbourne Bike Share’s website has maps showing where the bike stands are and where bike paths are, but not both on the same map. The Melbourne TravelSmart Map is better – it has both the bike stands and bike paths, not that it’s practical to consult a map while cycling. Depending on where you’re going, you need local knowledge to find the nearest stands to yourself, to where you want to be, where the bike paths are, and which streets are likely to be busy or not busy at any given time of day. For tourists, this is a problem.
For keen cyclists visiting Melbourne with time to research each trip, I strongly recommend Melbourne Bike Share. For the rest of us, I’d recommend caution. Melbourne’s hills may not be steep, but the learning curve is.
