Glasgow’s cycle hire fleet to go electric from November

Glasgow’s cycle hire scheme will go fully electric from the middle of next month, the city council has announced.

Voi Technology UK will take on the scheme from early November, replacing the current bikes operated by nextbike.

The city currently has 1,030 non-electric nextbikes and 209 e-bikes but the new deal will see them all replaced with a minimum of 1,000 e-bikes.

It comes two months after Voi launched a similar scheme in Edinburgh, with an initial 50 bikes expected to increase to 800 over time.

Glasgow’s cycle hire scheme has operated since 2014 and has recorded almost three million hires from 280,000 registered users.

However, the contract was put up for tender earlier this year and it was awarded to Swedish firm Voi, who will run the scheme for up to five years.

The council said Voi bikes would operate on a hybrid docking basis, allowing users to park within designated on-street zones rather than fixed docking stations.

It said this approach would help free-up pedestrian space and make it easier to expand the scheme in future.

A council official previously said the pricing structure would completely change so people were charged “minute by minute” rather than the current system where users have to hire a bike for 30 minutes.

There will also be options for monthly subscriptions and daily passes.

Users of the new fleet will download the Voi app which will enable them to locate bikes which they can then unlock by scanning a QR code.

The nextbike scheme will continue until 31 October and the council warned there may be a brief period of reduced availability before Voi’s scheme becomes fully operational in mid-November.