Woodend-based company CyclePort will trial what it is billing as “world first” technology in Bendigo.
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Managing director Al Reid said he hoped to use the City of Greater Bendigo’s trial of his product as a global launch pad for the peer-to-peer sharing system.
“The core idea here, what makes this unique is that it is a universal system,” Mr Reid said.
“If you think about a normal bike share system – like Melbourne’s blue bikes, for example – you’re talking about a single type of bike.
“With this system you can put any style of push bike, it could be a BMX, a mountain bike, a race bike, or it could be an e-bike and its battery would get charged to the correct voltage.”
Mr Reid said the product was backed by a versatile software system which would allow allow users to keep their bikes private or shared with certain people.
Bikes could be open free of charge to anyone on the system – or even rented out to the public.
He said Bendigo council was chosen to trial the technology because it was a case in which one local government covered a confined urban area.
“Bendigo is the perfect test as it’s an isolated city which will allow us to test the technology in a robustly-controlled environment,” he said.
“Somewhere like Melbourne, with a number of councils covering a sprawling area could have been a bit messy.
“And Bendigo is a forward-looking city.”