West Midlands Bike Share Scheme

WMCA's vision is to create a safe, affordable and easy to use bike share scheme across the West Midlands and sought a single supplier to provide a high-quality bike share scheme, comprising physical and geo-fenced docking infrastructure, bikes (both mechanical and e-bikes) and operational services across the urban areas of the seven constituent WMCA authorities.

WMCA conducted a competitive dialogue procedure pursuant to Regulation 30 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 to ensure that the best solution was secured with scheme commencement to begin in March 2021 for an initial term of 5 years with potential for the scheme to be extended by up to 3 years in three separate 12-month extensions at the Authority's discretion and dependent on the supplier's achievement of key milestones.

Key details of the scheme are as follows:

1. The scheme will provide a minimum of 1,500 bikes (mixture of mechanical and e-bikes with a minimum of 10% e-bikes) in the seven constituent authorities (Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton) within the first two years of the contract term with scope for expansion of this number of bikes and scope of the scheme depending on demand;
2. In addition to the bikes, the supplier will provide infrastructure and also operational services related to the scheme for WMCA;
3. A services agreement between WMCA and its official bike share supplier;
4. WMCA's preference is that the bikes will predominantly be physically ‘docked’, whether through Sheffield stands, traditional physical docking infrastructure or integration with existing street furniture, in certain locations in constituent areas but is also open to options such as geo-fenced docking stations (or similar), subject to the agreement of the local highway authority but WMCA's preference is for physical docking infrastructure due to WMCA's planning and streetscape requirements; and
5. The scheme will integrate with the existing public transport payment system to offer a seamless, high quality transport service for people moving between different modes of public transport in the West Midlands though this integration may be phased or initially alongside other payment methods.