Setting up a community eBike scheme

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Our first-ever Climate Action programme in Scotland has gone from strength to strength this year.

So far, the programme has involved:

• 3 new and engaging forums on EVs, car clubs and active travel;
• a brand-new Climate Action report, filled to the brim with data and inspiring case studies from Scotland’s Community Transport sector; and
• a series of Climate Action workshops, which we co-produced with our friends at Sustrans.

As a team, we’ve also focused our efforts on developing and sharing resources relevant to climate action in Community Transport, from events to funding to training.   

Throughout this programme, we’ve been celebrating the work of our members and hope that through this we’ve encouraged other operators to learn about new ways they could take climate action with their own services. From research we carried out in 2021 for our More than a Minibus report, we know that the sector is committed to taking climate action, so we made this a priority for us too.

Something we discovered through our research is that in 2021, 5% of our members operated bike or eBike hire schemes. Shared access to cycling can make communities healthier, fairer, and better connected. This is particularly true for eBike hire schemes, as eBikes can be more accessible than manual cycles for people who are new to cycling, have longer journeys to make or who have health conditions that might limit their use of manual cycles.  

Despite community-led eBike hire being a brilliant way to make active travel more inclusive, we didn’t have any specific resources at CTA to support groups to set up their own eBike hire scheme… Until now! 

CTA staff across the UK have worked in collaboration with our members to produce an advice resource with lots of hints and tips to support local charities or community groups setting up and operating their very own community eBike scheme. The ‘how-to’ guide, which you can download here, covers:

• what an eBike hire scheme is and what the set-up might entail
• information on health and safety, insurance, funding
• three inspiring examples of successful community eBike hire schemes from within our membership

We hope this resource will be useful to operators and will support you to venture into the ever-expanding world of community-led active travel! 

If you’ve any feedback on this guide, or are thinking about setting up your own community eBike scheme to expand or establish your Community Transport service – let us know! We’d love to hear from you – give us an email at advice@ctauk.org.