“Whenever I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the human race.”
Bradford District was supposed to get e-bikes in spring 2025. It now won’t
By Narinder Purba
Ironically, news that the spring start date for Bradford Council’s laudable but long overdue plan to introduce a proper e-bike scheme to the district is now “under review” comes at a time when the weather has – after an unusually prolonged dry spell (a season that is in the running to break records for all the wrong reasons) – turned a lot wetter.
Timing, after all, is everything. Just ask Rishi Sunak (remember him?). The former PM, all but muted in the wilderness of the opposition’s diminished backbenches, is probably now best remembered for getting drenched outside of No 10 when he announced the date for the 2024 general election (which says a lot about his forgettable tenure).
It is sensibly better to launch in warmer, sunnier conditions, when folk are less inclined to respond with derision (selling cycling to the uninitiated or the lapsed when it’s wet and grey is just asking for trouble). So, nevermind that it won’t happen this spring, as promised back in September – eight long months ago – with the powers that be chirpy at the fact that it would “coincide with “drier weather” and UK City of Culture celebrations.
And forget about the fact that we’ve had the sunniest spring on record – ignoring also, for a moment, the clear and devastating impact that climate change is having on the planet (underplayed and misunderstood as ever) – which would have provided the council with near perfect conditions to dig out the party poppers and make a big song and a dance about how good e-bikes are.
Perhaps we’re in the wrong and coming at it too meteorologically, a vantage point that invariably pegs spring to the months of March, April and May. If we think about the season astronomically, well, that gives the council until 21 June, the summer solstice, to get its act together and hit its own deadline. It can’t be too much of an ask can it? Surely a lot of the work, the prep, the procurement, the strategy, the rollout and so on and so on has already been done?
It’s worth remembering that enough time has passed since Bradford Council first announced back in late August that it was looking to allocate around £800,000 in revenue that had been generated by clean air zone (CAZ) charges to the e-bike scheme to get the proverbial ball more than rolling down the proverbial hill (or is that up?).
The council certainly isn’t short of staff, seeing as it employs around 8,500 people,which makes it one of the biggest employers in the district as it proudly notes on its very dated website (how about spending some taxpayer money on getting that into shape?).
You’d assume that with plenty of experts, plenty of resources and plenty of power, influence and connections, that getting the scheme up and running in time would be within the capabilities and capacity of the council. Apparently not (and we say this, admittedly, without really having a clue as to what this kind of initiative requires, although we did glance over a key document that is discussed a little more below. But still …).
It would be interesting to know what happened after the proposal was approved in September. How long did it take from that meeting on 3 September for someone to take that first important step forward? Was the project assigned to the council’s equivalent of a project manager? Was a team put together? Was there a kick-off meeting? What internal comms were sent? Was there a Gantt chart outlining key dates, milestones and responsibilities? Did anyone read Collaborative Mobility UK’s (CoMoUK) very handy 2022 Bike share guidance for local authorities?
Also, isn’t it the case that a lot of the initial, formative legwork was done in the run-up to the council meeting in September? The report clearly suggests so. There’s context, like the council’s brilliantly ambitious net-zero target of 2038 (“with significant progress to be made by 2030”) and how cycling fits into it.
There’s also detail about the impact e-bike schemes can have, whether it’s personal (they encourage people to take up or return to cycling) or societal (moving people away from an over-reliance on cars). And there’s strategic insight, from where such a scheme would be deployed (currently and regrettably the focus seems to be on the main urban area) to funding and revenue considerations.
Plus, on the other side of the road, in Leeds, the Labour-run council have had a successful scheme in place since 2023 (so successful, in fact, that last month it announced that it was increasing its fleet of Beryl e-bikes, increasing the number of docking stations and widening its geographical reach). Could that not have been copied, pasted and adapted in a fair and respectful way?
How is it then that the council has missed the boat on this? Because it has (let’s just give astronomical spring a miss because June kicks off meteorological summer and we’re done with that season). We say this with all due respect because it’s not as if it hasn’t been moving the e-bike scheme forward. It has.
In December, for instance, a report presented at a meeting of the regeneration and environment overview and scrutiny committee revealed that the council had undertaken a procurement exercise with Beryl being in contention. It mentioned that the exact locations were “due to be finalised” and, more importantly, it reaffirmed a spring 2025 launch. And it’s a hard date – not hard to achieve, hard as in set – because, as CoMoUK notes in its guidance, a spring launch “maximises the chance of building a substantial user base during better weather”.
Further, Andrew Whittles, assistant director of sustainability at Bradford Council, told us via email that the council “continues to design and develop the scheme to ensure it is right for Bradford”, which includes developing “security around the e-bike docking technology, working with the university and the private sector, and [looking into] interoperability with the neighbouring scheme in Leeds.
This all highlights progress but clearly, from our perspective, not at a pace that would have allowed the council to have launched in spring. The council, while having set the deadline, disagrees. When asked if it had set itself an unrealistic target, Whittles said that the “anticipated timescales were based on thorough market testing and the experience of similar schemes”. He added: “We believe our approach is sensible and in line with expectations that the council carries out due diligence when defraying public funding.”
So, all that remains is the one question we want answered: when can we expect the e-bike scheme to go ahead in Bradford? It’s looking very unlikely that it will be in 2025. With spring over, all that’s left is summer and early autumn. And this isn’t enough time to build up enough momentum for a scheme like this to establish itself as more than just a novelty. Because it isn’t. It’s a better way to travel – and better for individuals and the planet. A shame then, that it couldn’t have happened this year. Spring 2026 it is.
*Quote attributed to H.G. Wells