CYCLISTS will have to look on enviously when a new bike hire scheme starts in London next month after it emerged that the county council has abandoned plans for a similar scheme in Oxford.

Londoners and visitors to the capital will be able to use 6,000 new hire bikes.

But a pilot scheme in Oxford, due to begin on a more modest scale this summer, with 90 bikes stationed at 32 locations in the city, has been ditched because of the cash crisis.

The council had planned to spend about £85,000 on an 18-month trial as part of efforts to reduce traffic on Oxford’s congested roads and encourage more people to take up cycling.

Paul Cullen, a member of city cycling campaign group Cyclox, said: “The council should rethink this decision and put it back on the agenda as soon as possible.

“This scheme would have told visitors and commuters ‘you don’t need to bring a car into Oxford, you can get about by bike’.

“If the bikes can help save a car trip, the benefits are far greater than the cost of implementing this scheme.”

County council spokesman Owen Morton said: “Given the uncertain national economic picture, it was decided that the funds needed for the development of this pilot scheme would be better directed towards other transport priorities.”

He added: “The project would in any case now be subject to the council’s recently announced review of its capital spending programme for the next five years, in response to likely forthcoming cuts in Government funding.”

Mr Morton said it was not possible to say yet where the money would be reallocated within the council’s budget.