London Cycle Hire

@fox - I know TfL talk about modal shift but the scale of the need is so great a few bikes, even tens of bikes, won't make a difference. Maybe you need to comprehend the scale of the need - the 521 bus, for instance, shifts about 80 people every 2-3 minutes from London Bridge to the City during peak.

Knowing this the bike stands were purposely located *away *from big train stations. Check where the nearest stand is to London Bridge.

Personally, I think it's quite important that people understand that these bikes are not part of the modal shift policy in and of themselves - the only method to do this is large-scale transport options (trains, buses etc), or many more commuters travelling from home. As such, the boris bikes are in danger of confusing the issue and wasting money on a less essential transport alternative.

Good to hear you're on the case oliver
(Val contacted me 2 years ago about getting training- she pulled out at the last minute-perhaps I should get in touch with her?)

Yes, do.

I think it's quite important that people understand that these bikes are not part of the modal shift policy in and of themselves - the only method to do this is large-scale transport options (trains, buses etc)

Are you sure about this? Modal shift is not necessarily about moving a large proportion of people from one mode to another, it can be about moving just enough of them to bring the congested mode down to it's free flowing capacity. The switch from free flow to gridlock can occur quite suddenly with only a small proportionate change in total traffic, perhaps just a couple of percent.

@mdcc_tester

I'm very confused about the various motivations of the professional institutions here. My LCC mag trumpets the 'fact' that 24,000 journeys were made on Barclays bikes helping people to cope with the tube strike.

The number of people that commute to work by tube each day is about 3.5 million. And on top of that is trains and buses.

So, that's 0.7% or so of tube travellers - maybe 0.3% of all commuters - "beat the strike" by using a Barclays bike, and that's if we assume (which we can't) that every one of those Barclays bikes was used to replace a tube journey.

Oh, and the biggest thing that would cut traffic in the peak is school buses. Barclays bikes are not about practical transport solutions.

The LCC motivation is simple, any bike journey is a good journey. It makes you feel good and is good for your health. If it is a transfer from motorised transport then it is good for everyone else in saving energy, cutting pollution and CO2, cutting noise and saving money. If it is on a bojo bike then fees will add to TfL's bank balance while every bus or tube journey costs more than the fare.

dulwichrider's numbers for tubes are several times too high for If we are only looking at Central London where the bojo bikes roam, but he is right that these bikes make little impact on mass public transport. Coming into the central area about 90% of trips are by public transport. About 20% of the rest is bicycles, bojo bikes could add another 3 or 4%.

So, in terms of on road transport bojo bikes can make a difference. They can also make a difference to bus services. Currently most peak hour buses are overfull and are pretty inefficient because of the crowding, loading and unloading and because of congestion. Providing an alternative for even a few thousand bus passengers can make a real difference to the service everyone else gets. It also makes the bus service more cost effective.

Bojo bikes can never solve the problems of mainline rail commuters. They are dropped at stations at the edge of the central area and then have to get the rest of the way by some other means. That has always been a big problem for the tube and bus people, no wonder the bojo bikes can't solve that one. TfL estimate the demand for bojo bikes from Waterloo is about 2,800 in the morning peak, they can only offer 350 bikes. What is really needed is an Amsterdam or Tokyo style bike park for thousands of private bikes.

I'll be writing briefly about this on a hyperlocal blog I contribute and I'll send a link. Basically, I hear what the LCC are saying and it kinda makes sense but my worry is that this could be a zero sum game where money and political energy being spent on vast schemes for frivolous bike journeys and imaginary signposted blue-painted commutes ends up being taken away from more practical cycling solutions.

As you might have guessed, on my long-ish daily commute I have to avoid almost all cycling infrastructure as I believe it to put me in more dangerous positions than riding as a vehicle.

more practical cycling solutions.

"more practical cycling solutions"? This sounds too much like management bullshit. All that needs to happen is for people to get on their bikes.

"All that needs to happen is for people to get on their bikes."

you clearly haven't looked at the new cycling infrastructure being built in London, or really read what I said. People aren't really riding more due to infrastructure other than a small part of zone 1 where the Barclays bikes are. this is great, if you are geographically lucky or want to travel at unusual times, and ride for short distances slowly. Meanwhile, most commuters I know are forced to ignore bad cycle routes and paths, even as they are shouted at by aggressive car drivers to use them.

the very real risk is that political motivation to actually improve cycle infrastructure - confronting streets lined with parked cars, and other measures that don't compromise cyclists (not "mixed use" pavements, having to give way to minor side roads etc) - will be ignored. I think this is happening now, as it goes, with politicians blinded by Barclays blue.

Infrastructure is very important, but not necessarily for the reasons that some people want cycle lanes or cycle tracks. As dulwichrider says, their effectiveness is highly disputed. Politically, it is always more important and more far-reaching if you can get the nodes changed, e.g. junctions, gyratories, or city centres, so that they don't enmesh cyclists in constant detours or force them to wait all the time because traffic signals are required to deal with motorists' tendency to be unable to negotiate priority at junctions without causing crashes. Change the junctions, e.g. reduce motor traffic capacity at them, and you change the links for the better, too.

this is the blog post as threatened (with one of my favourite pics to illustrate)

http://www.kidbrookekite.co.uk/2010/10/kidbrooke-to-london-cycle-not-so.html

this is the blog post as threatened (with one of my favourite pics to illustrate)

http://www.kidbrookekite.co.uk/2010/10/kidbrooke-to-london-cycle-not-so.html

Nice blog. I agree with you on that pointless 2 lane thing at Tower Hill - actually impossible to use without breaking the highway code, since you can only access it from the pavement.

mind if I pop in with a quick query? Can't see this on the bloody site itself. If you've ordered a 7-day access period, must the bike-using days be consecutive? (If I were money-grabbing I'd make them so... I'm not, but maybe TfL/Barclays are)

the 7 days starts from when you first use a bike, then expires 7 days later.

You will get charged the 7 day 'access fee' when you take a bike. You will not be charged the access fee again during the following 7 consecutive days. If you use the bikes again following those days you will be charged the access fee again.
Basically you get charged the access fee for each 7 day block of usage.
Then of course if you use a bike for more than 30mins at a time you'll be charged the relevant 'usage fee' unless you went to a stand that was full and claimed your 15min extension to get to another one

Bollocks! That's rotten, I knew 2 days free was too good to be true, and I shouldn't've been ordering it late at night...

basically for London residents who are in town fairly frequently the annual sub is the one to get I think.
Means that you don't need to umm and aah about whether or not to start a new access period. Just grab a bike and go.
Even if you don't quite make enough trips for it to be the cheapest option, it's not going to cost much more than the others and it means that the bikes are already there, pre-paid so you may as well use them (unless the stand's empty).
I think they should issue credits if you visit an empty stand and then have to walk to a non-empty one to get a bike. Might incentivise them to redistribute more efficiently.

I haven't run into this problem yet, but how do you get the 15 minute extension at a full docking station?

put your key into the kiosk and press the right button

Cheers

+1 for boris bikes

not being able to afford the £8 something a day for tfl travel card each and every day I'm in london I managed to get a bike pass, its just £1 a day and I only occasionally go over th 30mins, take 5min break, look at where I'm going, walk about, take some candids of people on 60's camera, rebike, move to next destination.
iv'e found tehm massively heavy and unwieldy things, but costing just a quid and allowing me to work my way around london freely is defanatly worth that to me. haven't managed to find the blue cycle lane thingies and often struggle to find the docking stations in time, they are so poorly signposted! I've seen maps that look similar to the bike maps, obviously very recent additions to the london cityscape yet hte bike docking points aren't on them? Instead i have one of the phone apps for it, but time loading and getting lcoation often means I run over my 30mins, grrrr.

Also why don't they have quick locks like the paris/milan/barcelona ones do? on the outskirts of town if you put a bike back in a rack it will go and leave you walking for ages to find another,,, this all brings me to building a cheap hack for london in future, which I'll just leave chained up somewhere (hopefully).

I have heard it said that the cheap locks actually lead to the bikes being stolen. it encourages people to use the cheap locks, which are ludicrously easy to defeat => £300 on your credit card :-(

Can you carry a lock that actually works?

I though the huge amount of nearby docking station would render lock useless because they're all within 5 minutes of each other?

thinking more about at peak times..... you've managed to beat an old granny to the station, got the last working bike out of the dock, but oh noes, you needed to get a bottle of milk, either lock it to something outside newsagent or put back in the dock and have to walk home...
That was kind of my issue. I.E both strike days I've had to walk back across most of london (some 6-7miles) as all the working bikes have been out of the stations (those grannies are niftier than me lol).

your right about cheap locks though, there wouldn't be the huge bike theft 'scene' (as a non-londoner I would regard it as such) if more bikes were secured more erm, securely! saying that, where DO all the stolen bikes go? they can't all end up on bricklane on a sunday morning, surely there is some sort of mass export of cycles out of london to.... .bristol, cambridge, oxford ??

Stolen to order most likely. You know, for collectors and that.

Yes, locking them somewhere other than docking stations just wouldn't work in London. The right decision was taken there.