Oxford is to benefit from a pilot cycle hire scheme called Oxonbike after a successful bid by Oxfordshire County Council to the Government’s Local Sustainable Transport Fund.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, we have heard this all before – but this time it’s real and it launches to the public on Thursday.

For an initial two-year period, Headington gets 30 bikes with seven dedicated docking racks. The aim is to enable users to hire cycles at little or no cost for travel between Thornhill Park and Ride and the main employment centres, the John Radcliffe Hospital and Oxford Brookes University. For 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, these bikes will be available to registered users just like London’s Boris bikes. They utilise some nifty technology called Byker, developed by the guys from Grand Scheme in Newcastle.

The bike gives you a key, once you provide a unique code after registering. When you finish the hire you simply lock up the machine in a dedicated area known to the bike by its GPS unit.

There are seven at the moment, but I expect that if this is anything like the success elsewhere, they will quickly multiply.

While on hire the bike is always communicating its position to the online system, so users can log into their account to see the availability of bikes in any particular location.

While it’s free for the first 30 minutes, even going a minute over will result in a charge to your monthly billing account – so you can see the system is designed to get you somewhere quickly free of charge. You can, of course, lock the bike anywhere you like in between docking with its dedicated lock, but you will start racking up those charges. The bikes are the same as those used in hire schemes across Europe and I have seen them in action in Strasbourg, France. They are not too heavy, built to last and easily recognisable thanks to distinctive components and stickers.

The Byker key release unit is on the handlebars and utilises solar rays to recharge its battery. Wow! Could this scheme get any greener? The bicycles will be checked by a mechanic every day and redistributed around the racks if necessary.

Walton Street Cycles will be providing mechanical service and day-to-day running of the scheme. With someone local ready to help it’s hard to imagine how this could go wrong.

Hiring is a doddle, just visit grandscheme.co.uk/oxford/ to register. You will be asked to provide your personal details and after inputting your card details you are ready to rock and roll.

You will be charged at the end of each month, but it doesn’t have to be a shock. You can monitor your use easily by logging into your account any time you like.

If you work in Headington and have to make your way around daily by foot, car or bus, you now have another alternative, faster than foot and cheaper than the bus.

It’s hard to see why you wouldn’t use this scheme.