Costs and scalability

Introduction

This chapter explores early learning from the pilots about costs and scalability in providing free bikes for school age children who cannot afford them.

Direct cost of a standard bike

Across the pilots, the direct cost of providing a new standard bike ranged from £230 to £400. The figure at the upper end was for Pedal Up Shetland, which operates in a very remote area and experienced increased costs as a result. The other projects ranged from £230 to £362 for a new bike. The average (median) cost across all projects using new standard bikes was £354.

The cost of providing a new bike does not include time some pilots spent on assembling bikes. Some projects reduced capital outlay by purchasing bikes directly from the manufacturer which needed to be assembled. This will have had an impact on the cost involved in providing a new bike.

For projects procuring refurbished and reconditioned bikes, the costs ranged from £60 to £457. The high end of the range was for Gearing Up project which worked with young people aged 16 to 24, who wished for high quality mountain bikes which were procured as ex-rentals from bike hire shops. The average (median) cost for procuring a recycled bike was £256. Projects emphasised that recycled bike values varied greatly, and should be seen as a range rather than a flat fee.

Angus Cycle Hub’s pilot involved refurbishing bikes which were destined for landfill, within the project. Identifying and accessing these bikes cost an average of £40. However to refurbish the bikes required both space and staff time. The costs of the warehouse set up (£10,000) and staff time for maintenance (estimated at 90% of maintenance staff time - £210,600) is therefore included in the costs of producing a refurbished bike. The total cost of producing 1,000 bikes is estimated at £260,600. This would take the average cost of producing a safe and usable refurbished bike at approximately £261.

Direct cost of an adaptive bike

The cost of new adaptive bikes ranged from £1,018 to £2,980. The cost of refurbished adaptive bikes at one project was £812.

In addition, one project accessed an adaptive bike that was destined for landfill, and refurbished it in-house. The direct cost of the bike being delivered was approximately £40, but the amount of time and resources it took to refurbish the bike is not currently known.

Direct cost of bike safety package

Along with the bike, all projects provided some safety equipment.

Equipment	Range from project costs	Average (Median)
Helmets	£12.50 to £29 Highest cost in Shetland where costs tend to be higher	£21
Lights	£6.50 to £20	£15
Locks	£6 to £41 Varied dependent on lock type	£15
Gloves	£8 - £10Provided in projects with a focus on mountain biking	£9
Rain cover	£12 One project had provided	£12

A few projects provided additional equipment, including high viz vests (£6), other clothing (up to £37), mudguards (£23), knee/elbow pads (£40), cycle maintenance kits (£16) and oil (£5). The Cycling Friendly Secondary Schools project provided schools with funding for the equipment they requested – including helmets, locks and lights for the bikes. Together, these requests averaged at £40 per unit.

Cost of bike maintenance

At the time of this evaluation, the pilots remained in a relatively early phase in terms of understanding the cost of maintenance requirements over the longer term. Bikes had been distributed throughout the pilot year, and some had not yet required any maintenance. The evaluator worked with a few of the projects to separate out costs for maintenance, exploring what proportion of time staff spent on different tasks – but the projects indicated that this would require further exploration longer term.

The cost of maintenance per bike ranged very significantly from £12 per bike through to £928 per bike.

On project estimated maintenance at £12 per bike to date. It used a recycling model, with bikes returned when outgrown, at which point a full service was undertaken. This meant that some ongoing maintenance costs were included in the cost of providing another young person with a bike.

One project had maintenance costs of £20 per bike and this involved a simple check that the bike was fit for use before distribution.

One project with maintenance costs at £31 per bike connects with existing active travel hubs in the local area to enable children to get their bikes fixed.

One project with maintenance at £33 per bike offered a proactive repairs and maintenance approach, with maintenance undertaken by a close partner organisation.

One project with maintenance at £50 per bike linked with the Scottish Government Cycle Repair Scheme, providing a voucher for maintenance.

One project with maintenance at £57 per bike provided grants to schools to undertake maintenance, including equipment and skills development.

One projects had estimated costs of approximately £200 per bike based on estimates of how much time staff spent repairing and maintaining bikes, within their wider work.

Two projects had higher maintenance costs - at £367 and £928 per bike. This included very regular servicing and repairs throughout the course of the pilot. These projects indicated that in the future, they may reduce the frequency of services from the level included in the pilot.

It was clear from the pilots that bikes do need to be maintained in order for children to be able to use them on an ongoing basis, and there will be some costs associated with this. However, further work is required to understand reasonable estimates for ongoing maintenance costs. As families have their bikes for longer than one year, maintenance costs are likely to increase as issues with bikes arise.

Cost of bike storage

Each of the projects also had costs for bike storage. Some projects had costs for storing bikes pre-distribution, to enable bike building, matching with young people and distribution to families.

Other projects had costs for bikes to be stored on school grounds or in community hubs, for ongoing use.

Across all the projects, storage costs accounted for £163,116, for 2,600 bikes distributed by August 2022.

Cost of identifying families and delivering equipment

Pilots also incurred costs in terms of staff time identifying and targeting eligible families, raising awareness of the opportunity, and transport costs associated with delivery of the bikes and wider equipment. The cost per bike ranged between £128 and £346.

Two projects – Pedal Up Shetland and Cycling Friendly Secondary Schools – did not incur any costs in identifying families and delivering equipment. For the Cycling Friendly Secondary Schools project this was led by schools themselves. For the Pedal Up Shetland project a small number of bikes had been distributed at the time of the evaluation, and costs absorbed locally.

The average cost per bike for targeting and distribution for the pilots was £159 for the 2,600 bikes across all pilots, and £180 per bike for the 2,299 bikes across the 7 pilots with targeting and distribution costs.

Scaling up the approach

Initial exploration by Transport Scotland suggests that the number of children requiring a free bike could range from 80,000 to 160,000.

Analysis of pilot project costs suggests that the cost of providing a standard free bike could be in the range of:

• £261 to £354 on average for a bike
• £72 for a safety package including helmet, lock, lights, bell, gloves and rain cover
• £160 - £180 per bike for identification of families and distribution of the bike (excluding any wider support around cycle training or maintenance skills)
• £62 per bike for storage (in school, community or pre-distribution).

This is a total of approximately £655 to £768 per bike.

Importantly, this does not include any costs for essential maintenance, or for wider support to encourage use of the bike, including cycle skills training, maintenance training and maintenance support – which families found to be essential. It also does not include staff resources within Scottish Government and Transport Scotland for managing the pilot projects.

Providing a bike to each individual child who cannot afford a bike could therefore incur an initial investment of between £54 million and £120 million, with 80,000 to 160,000 bikes provided.

It should be noted that:

• There may be some economies of scale, as the most efficient approaches to providing bikes are adopted.
• One bike will not last a child their entire school life. Children may require three bikes (lower primary, upper primary, secondary) to have access to a bike at all stages.
• A phased approach could be used, providing young people with a bike at a certain stage of their school life, rather than throughout their school life.
• Some approaches allow for fleets and libraries, which allow for more than one child to use the same bike. For bike fleets and libraries, the ratio within the pilots was approximately one bike for every three to four children.
• Under some pilot schemes, bikes could be returned and refurbished for another user, which could also reduce costs. Further work would need done to explore the life of a bike, how many times it could be refurbished and the costs of this.
• The cost of providing adaptive bikes ranged from £812 to £2,980, with higher associated maintenance and storage costs than for standard bikes. More than a quarter of children in Scotland have additional support needs. It is hard to estimate how many would need an adaptive bike, but Scotland’s pupil census in 2021 found that more than 8,400 pupils have a physical or motor impairment and more than 15,700 have a physical health problem.