The Hero group has sent a ‘cycle on rent’ proposal to Ludhiana administration to be included in the smart city project.
Under this project, residents of Ludhiana will be able to rent a cycle from cycle stands across the city.
In the beginning, the group plans to set up five stands at Clock Tower, Fountain Chowk, Durga Mata Mandir, Bus Stand and Aggar Nagar.
Authorities are trying to include DMC hospital and Sarabha Nagar market in the list as well. Hero Cycles Limited along with Ludhiana Smart City Limited (LSCL) has submitted a proposal of launching 200 bicycles in the first phase at a cost of Rs 4 crore.
In the first phase, there will be 12 stations, from where people will get bicycles. In the second and third phase, the number of bicycles would be 500 and 1,000 respectively with the number of cycle stations being increased to 60.
CEO, LSCL-cum-MC commissioner Ghanshyam Thori, said, “The project would be on public private partnership mode by way of swiss challenge method which is used when a public authority gets a proposal for some project from a single company. To avoid a controversy, the idea is used to float tenders where other such companies can also participate.”
Authorities have already sent the proposal to make the city cycling-friendly to the Union government and the ‘cycles on rent’ project was part of this proposal.
The proposal for separate cycling lanes is also in the pipeline. Under the project, cycles will be available at a nominal cost on an hourly basis and residents will be able to leave the cycle at any stand.
There will be a smart card system for payment and GPS will be installed on the cycles.
