Starter Kit. Idea 432 of 500. Cluster 22
Bicycle hire and repair in the tourist towns and the flat districts
The mechanism, from the book
The village cannot get a box to the container port. The gap is small firms, not big ones.
The first step
Borrow or buy three second-hand bicycles, service them with the help of a local mechanic, and park them outside a guesthouse or café in a flat tourist town with a daily price chalked on a board. Offer the owner a share of each hire in return for the space. The proof is how many days in the first fortnight the bikes go out, and at what price.
- Who pays first
- A backpacker or cycling couple staying in a flat town who wants to reach the nearby sites cheaply and at their own pace.
- What leaves today
- Every visitor who cycles instead of hiring a car spends the saving locally, and the town keeps a repair trade that serves its residents too.
Ask first
- the local council (Municipal Council, Urban Council or Pradeshiya Sabha). Ask whether parking hire bicycles outside a shop or guesthouse needs the council's permission.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether a bicycle hire service can be listed for visitors to the town.
Check before you spend
Confirm permission to keep bicycles on the pavement or a forecourt, insurance for a rider who falls, and a signed hire form for each customer.
Find out these three numbers
- What does a good second-hand bicycle cost to buy and service?
- How many visitors a day ask the guesthouse about getting around?
- What daily price would a visitor pay for a bicycle?
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.