If you've tried to ride across town on one of Melbourne Bike Share's blue bikes in the last few days, you probably found that you haven't been able to get the bikes out of the stations. That's because the Melbourne Bike Share network has been down since late last week and is currently still unavailable.
The government-owned network, which is operated by RACV, has cited "technical issues presented with the transition from the recently discontinued Telstra 2G network" as the cause for the service outage. The closure of Telstra's 2G network last week meant the bike share stations (where bikes are docked) are unable to communicate with the bikes' computers, so the bikes cannot be released.
In an interview with 3AW, Gordon Oakley General Manager of Motoring and Mobility at RACV admitted that they had known about the pending 2G network cancellation for a year and had preempted the shutdown with updates to the Melbourne Bike Share network. "To our embarrassment, there was another piece of hardware that was required instead of just updating it," Oakley told 3AW.
Some Melbourne Bike Share stations are open, though users will be unable to dock bikes at closed bike stations. RACV is currently working to upgrade systems at all stations and hopes to have all bike stations operational by the end of this week.
The bike share scheme has been plagued with sluggish uptake since its launch in 2010. This year, five bike stations were relocated from the CBD to the Cities of Port Phillip and Yarra in response to the decrease in share bike usage in the CBD since the introduction of the free tram zone in January 2015.