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Cardiff's new fleet of street hire bikes dotted around the city centre is one of the more visible manifestations of its status as a sustainable transport trail blazer in Wales.

Last year Cardiff was unveiled as the country's first Sustainable Transport Centre as the Welsh Assembly Government sought to build on the experience of smaller pilot schemes in England which had some success in reducing travel by car.

Places like Worcester saw a reduction in car use of around 9% by launching multiple initiatives targeting those short trips that make up half of all journeys and promoting alternatives that are better for the environment and for people's health.

But if the initial OYBike experience is anything to go by, the people of Cardiff may take some convincing to leave their cars at home. While remaining optimistic for the future company director Bernie Hanning accepts that take-up has been slow.

"We've only got 70 bikes here. You need critical mass; you need bikes with 300 metres of other bikes; and you need people to be aware. We're only just beginning to recruit users."

"Over the past 40 years the car has been king. Cardiff is now changing from being car-dependent to attempting to reduce car dependency."

OYBike says that since the weather improved it has seen daily usage increase by 100% week on week and is hopeful that plans to add further hire stations in the residential areas around central Cardiff will boost numbers still further.

With £34 million to spend on sustainable transport schemes over two years, Cardiff council has also got on its bike. So far the focus has been on infrastructure projects with spending on promotion and education a secondary priority.

That's of concern to Lee Waters of the green transport charity Sustrans Cymru. "If we show people that in a town it is often quicker to get door-to-door by bike rather than car, they will do it," he tells Eye on Wales.

"If you make it difficult for people they won't do it. The challenge for this project is how do we make it simple, easy and convenient for people to travel in ways which benefit their health and the environment?"

"If we do that, we'll crack it. If we don't, and we waste a lot of money on expensive infrastructure projects which don't address that behavioural problem, then we're going to fail."

Cardiff's sustainable transport plans were not tested by the rigorous bidding process that preceded similar initiatives in England. Instead the city was given extra funding to implement projects already in the pipeline.

Delme Bowen, who holds the transport portfolio at county hall, accepts that may have blurred the city's initial focus.

"A lot of these plans were in the offing, they weren't strategically tailored, I would say that. The cycling plan that we did have was a bit bitty and "Let's do what we can".

"Now we are looking at it in a strategic way - we've just made a new appointment on the cycling side to assist in that - so I think we are looking at it differently."

Half the money being spent in Cardiff has come from the Welsh Assembly Government. It sees sustainable travel as key to achieving the ambitious target it has set itself of cutting transport carbon emissions by 3 per cent by next year.

With the clock ticking and a second sustainable travel area centred on Bangor in development, transport minister Ieuan Wyn Jones is standing by the decision to buy Wales' first sustainable travel centre "off-the-peg".

"There was not much point in us going back to square one and asking Cardiff, "You may have been developing a plan, but actually we want you to look at another way of delivering it"."

"It was very helpful that Cardiff had already developed their plans and we were able to bring money to the table so they could develop their plan. By doing that we've been able to give people real good opportunities."