Edinburgh‘s Just Eat Cycles has reported a record month in August, the month during which the Edinburgh Fringe and Edinburgh International Festival takes place and the capital’s population significantly increases. The system launched in September last year, just too late for the previous Fringe/Festival month. This month, the system managed 17,529 rides, with around 400 bikes available through the month across 70 docking stations. This represents around 1.5 trips per bike per day (t/b/d). The system including the above graphic showing routes taken. Just Eat Cycles has since added some additional bikes in, in early September, and now has around 500 available.
Just Eat Cycles publishes its trip and availability data as open data. The Trip data is published within a day of the trips happening, an impressively quick turnaround. They also publish regular maps showing routes taken. The above map, for August, includes at least one trip to Edinburgh Airport and another trip to Cramond Island (accessible by a causeway only at low tide). The former doesn’t have a docking station so journeys incur an out-of-station fee, but the journey may still have been cheaper than tram/parking surcharges. The latter does at least have a docking station nearby, back on the mainland.
Monthly journeys, bikes and average trips/bike/day for Edinburgh, so far:
| Month | Trips* | Avg Bikes | Trips/Bike/Day |
| September 2018** | 2277 | 140 | 1.1 |
| October 2018 | 3799 | 186 | 0.7 |
| November 2018 | 4047 | 302 | 0.5 |
| December 2018 | 3662 | 360 | 0.3 |
| January 2019 | 4750 | 233 | 0.7 |
| February 2019 | 4222 | 108 | 1.4 |
| March 2019 | 6549 | 341 | 0.6 |
| April 2019 | 8176 | 441 | 0.6 |
| May 2019 | 14160 | 258 | 1.8 |
| June 2019 | 10214 | 243 | 1.5 |
| July 2019 | 12290 | 309 | 1.3 |
| August 2019 | 17529 | 386 | 1.5 |
* Journeys on the last day of the month are normally missing from the trips data.
** Launched mid-month.
Hopefully Edinburgh will get to 2 t/b/d soon – a figure which is, very roughly, is a good benchmark for a well used, long-term-viable system. Edinburgh’s design means it can very easily move docking stations around, to adjust to corridors of good use (and low vandalism), although this has to be balanced against the frustration of loyal users finding their docking station has gone.