The people of Liverpool have opted to name the new council bicycle hire-scheme ‘City Bike’ following a vote.
Hundreds of people took part in the vote and a range of names were considered but ‘City Bike’ beat competition from names such as ‘Pop Cycle’ and ‘Pool Bike’ to be the name used on all bikes and stations across the city when the scheme is launched in April.
Liverpool City Council’s Cabinet Member for Transport and Climate Change, Councillor Tim Moore, said: “I’m really pleased that we’ve had such a fantastic response to our public vote, it shows just how much interest there is in this scheme.
“It’s important that local people are given ownership of this scheme, and what better way to do that than to ask them to choose the name for it? If all those who took part in this vote show the same level of enthusiasm for using the bikes, we can look forward to the scheme being a great success.
“We’re now just weeks from launch and I’m looking forward to us finalising the City Bike branding, as well as the design and colour of our bikes, and unveiling them to the public in the very near future.”
UK supplier HourBike Ltd was chosen to run the new scheme, which will be the biggest outside London.
It will launch in April with an initial 100 bikes at 10 city centre stations. By July, there will be 500 bikes at 50 stations; with 1,000 bikes at more than 100 stations, across the city, by March 2015.
To use the bikes people need to pay an annual membership fee and then they are able to take a bike from any station, ride it wherever they need to before returning it to any station when they are done.