Businesses across Liverpool are encouraging staff to get on their bikes with the city’s new cycle hire scheme.
The citybike corporate membership scheme is open to any businesses across the city. Employer benefits include reducing carbon emissions by choosing a sustainable travel method and saving money on city trips by not having to worry about finding a parking space, as well as promoting health and well-being for staff.
Launched in May by city leaders and Olympic cycling legend Chris Boardman, citybike is now the largest scheme in the country outside of London and still growing with plans for 1,000 bikes at 150 locations by 2015.
Station locations include key city landmarks such as Lime Street Station, Baltic Creative area, the Commercial District and Liverpool One bus station, as well as commuter areas just outside the city including Liverpool Innovation Park, Wavertree and Kensington.
Baltic Creative-based Lucid Games, developer of “Geometry Wars³: Dimensions”, were the first business to sign up to corporate membership – and they’re loving the scheme.
Helen Davidson, Finance Manager at Lucid, said:
“We think the citybike scheme is great. Most of our staff use trains to commute into Liverpool and it’s a bit of a walk from the train stations to our office, so citybikes have been really convenient to hop onto and ride to work, especially with the weather turning more wet and cold.”
The company, which makes computer games for the likes of Sony and Activision, have been in Baltic Creative area since its launch three years ago. More than half of the firm’s 36 staff use citybike regularly.
Helen added:
“It’s great to give people a different option to get to work, it’s easy to use citybike and also good for exercise.
“citybike is very convenient for our staff as they don’t have to worry about taking their own bike on the train and there are so many stations across the city and at other locations. It’s definitely been popular here for commuting, getting into town at lunch or enjoying a cycle on the waterfront. Some of our staff even use them in Sefton park at the weekend.”
If you sign your business up as a corporate member, whatever credit you deposit will be matched. So you pay £50, it will be matched and your citybike account is £100 in credit. With membership cards that can be shared among staff costing just £3 each, and citybike hire at only £1 per hour, that’s plenty of environmentally friendly, quick and easy journeys that can be made.
Employees pick up a bike from any station, head to their destination and drop the bike back off at the nearest station. It’s even easy to pay – simply preload your account or be invoiced each month.
To sign up for your corporate package now, simply call 0151 374 2034.
The citybike scheme is managed by Hourbike, which has similar projects in Dumfries, Lincoln, Nottingham and Southport, and is commissioned by Liverpool City Council using £1.5 million from Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF), allocated by the Department for Transport (DfT).
Follow @citybikelpl on Twitter to keep up to date with the latest news and station details.