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Helmets are the Law!
... another problem identified was that people hated helmets. Well okay, not necessarily the actual helmet. Just carrying them? It turns out that when I did a little more research and probing into their opinions on them. People often agreed that the helmet was a necessary piece of safety equipment. Even though most would be happy not to wear one. It's the principle of being fined for not wearing one which is the sticking point.
Now this is a heavily contested topic on helmet laws, and I'll post some links to the research below about them. Note that the author of the blogs reference is also a QUT student and has performed a very extensive research paper into the bike sharing scheme and it's failures. You can read this paper here http://eprints.qut.edu.au/53329/
(Fishman, Elliot, Washington, Simon, & Haworth, Narelle L. (2012) Barriers and facilitators to public bicycle scheme use : a qualitative approach. Transportation Research Part F : Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 15(6), pp. 686-698.)
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2013/12/18/did-the-helmet-law-reduce-commuting-by-bicycle/
Turns out it didn't have the impact you might think... Although children were most influenced and stopped using bicycles in the early 90's because of the law. The interesting part is that those 90's kids are now grown up, and make up a large portion of those opposed (still) to the helmet laws! Interesting read.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2012/10/09/why-is-brisbane-citycycle-an-unmitigated-flop/
This blog echo's that in the paper linked above. The chart below very quickly shows the authors opinions as to why it is a failure.
Most of these issues are being or have been addressed since his research, but I propose a different solution to abandoning the helmet law altogether.
Problem: Don't have a helmet, and don't want to carry one.
Solution: Providing the helmet free of charge when subscribing to the CityCycle service. (No Excuses that you don't have one).
Pick it up from a local authorised stockist like a 7 Eleven/Post office/Coles etc (much like the Melbourne CityCycle service)
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/citycycle-wont-follow-melbournes-5-helmet-lead-20110808-1ii05.html#ixzz31qFGf8zQ
Helmet storage lockers at the docking station. This allows users of the service to safely store their helmet at the dock and keep it dry for the afternoon return trip. To stop users storing items long term, a 24 hour fee would be applied for people failing to remove items within a reasonable time period. Users could use their GoCard to lock the lockers and hence a way to charge users for leaving objects in them.
The stakeholder we identified as being effected here was Business professionals working in the CBD. These stakeholders are not just users of the scheme. A business man/woman may use a CityCycle to get from point to point for meetings and business lunches. Having to carry a helmet into a business meeting or when meeting clients is less than favourable. This is why we considered the locker solution. It alleviates the problem of using the scheme and having to carry anything more than you needed for the normal day's work.
With business professionals having more accessibility and exposure to the service, there is potential advertising and financial backing to be canvassed from these users/clients.
The CityCycle scheme should make more effort to not just attract users, but financial backers also.
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