Cardiff Bike Rental Operator Expands Overseas

The company who brought bike hire to Cardiff city centre has announced the expansion of their scheme in France. Just over six months since the launch of the Nice scheme, and almost a quarter of a million journeys later, the scheme is set to extend to the West of the city.

The Velobleu scheme, run jointly with Veolia Transport, relies on the technical expertise of British bike rental company OYBike. Originally the scheme concentrated on the centre of Nice, providing 900 bikes for rental. Now the scheme is set to grow with an extra 300 bikes available, just in time for the increase of visitors as the holiday season approaches.

“There are many component parts to running a bike system and even after the physical infrastructure is in place, a high level of on-going technical support is needed to run the system,” said OYBike Managing Director Bernie Hanning. “OYBike is delighted to partner with Veolia, not just to provide our technical expertise but to support the expansion of the system. We pride ourselves on our technical innovations and the Velobleu scheme is a great shop-window for OYBike”.

As well as Cardiff and Nice, OYBike also runs schemes in Hampshire and also Vannes in France.

OYBike partnered with Veolia Transport in 2008. Veolia Transport is part of the Veolia Environnement group, currently operates services on behalf of 5,000 local, regional and national authorities in 28 countries around the globe. In 2008, it posted a revenue of €6.05 billion and carried over 2.7 billion passengers.

OYBike operates street-based rental station networks that allow customers to hire bikes as required via mobile phone. Customers can pick up a bike from one rental station and return to another as convenient.

Veolia Environnement is a world leader in environmental services, quoted in Paris and New York, and posted revenues of €32,6 billion in 2007. Veolia Transport employs almost 81,000 people and is headquartered in Paris.