London Cycle Hire

and then compare it to using the tube within zone 1 in a year.

£45 is massively cheap, with the only downside is simply the availability of bicycles.

and the difficulty of finding a docking station without a mobile app or map.

12p a day! Highway robbery!

edit: I know the £45 might be hard to swallow, but it's a good investment. If you live outside of the docking stations it might not seem like a worthwhile idea, but I've walked to work once or twice and picked up a Boris/Ken/Hire bike at Aldgate East and carried on the rest of my journey in style. It's not something I'd normally do but I will walk a couple miles and then pick up a hire bike if I need to make it in a hurry.

Everyone has a different situation but I think they represent a bargain for most people.

Everyone has a different situation but I think they represent a bargain for most people.

You certainly don't need to replace many bus journeys to make it pay for itself, but sat at your expensive computer connected to the interwebs at £20/month, you probably don't realise how hard it is for many paupers to round up an investment as small as £45, even if it does pay for itself in just a couple of months. Presumably you also need an available line of credit of £300 to provide the bond against loss/damage, something which an even larger group are unable to secure. It looks like a perfect investment opportunity for Credit Union/Micro-Finance types of operation.

Wouldn't it be £48 including the price of the key? That would work out to quiet a big out lay to people struggling from week to week.
And would many of those live within walking distance of a docking station, if they are already using public transport then they may already be paying out for a travel card so the bike would effectively be an extra outlay.

Kidboy

If you are having difficulty in forking out £48 in one go, could I suggest that you try and put aside 12p each day for the next year and then splash out at the beginning of 2012.

There must be something that you can economise on that would allow you to save 12p a day.

and then compare it to using the tube within zone 1 in a year.

£45 is massively cheap, with the only downside is simply the availability of bicycles.

It's the availability that's the killer for me - I don't live in Zone 1, so like kidboy says it'd be £45 plus whatever I spend on the Tube / bus getting into Zone 1 in the first place.

I mean obviously I have my own bicycle so this isn't the fairest comparison, but you see what I mean. I'm looking forward to seeing the scheme expand, that'll make it so much more useful to London on the whole.

Kidboy

If you are having difficulty in forking out £48 in one go, could I suggest that you try and put aside 12p each day for the next year and then splash out at the beginning of 2012.

There must be something that you can economise on that would allow you to save 12p a day.

Sorry wasn't meant in realation to me. Just pointing out that the initialy costs could seem prohibative to some.

Personally if i'm not on my own bike i have to get a train into Charing cross and am quiet happy to stroll around town, especially within zone one, a good walk reminds me how many pubs i haven't been in! There's only been a few times when I thought it would have been handy to use the boris bike

I agree that however much it is below £50 could be prohibitive to some (there have been times of my life where I wouldn't have been able to afford that), for those you could always pick the pay daily rate, one pound every day you use it instead of the zone 1 part of your travel. You may still have to pay for Zones 2 to wherever you live, but getting a borris bike will still be cheaper than a journey into zone one, let alone a return journey.

I travel from the busiest station for boris bike use to the city at rush hour (when I've used them, mostly I cycle all the way) and I've never had a problem getting a bike or docking it (obviously I wouldn't try to use it on a strike day!).

Presumably you also need an available line of credit of £300 to provide the bond against loss/damage,
not sure exactly what you mean but I use a debit card to a bank account that only has Twenty or so quid in it and no overdraft.

You don't have to pay £50!

They now take pay as you go on a debit or credit card. You just stroll up and pay £1 for 24 hour access. That is one hundred pennies, kids. No key required.

So paupers who can't raise £50 all at once end up paying £250/year instead. Not a specific critique of Borisbikes, just another example of how the poorer you are the higher your cost of living.

Unless you are someone who thinks they may use it fewer than four times a month. Like me.

I had one with properly tightened brakes the other day, accidentally pulled a few skids negotiating peds crossing over at Vauxhall, then pulled a massoive skid into the docking station. I was thinking "Rad!!" anyone who saw me must have thought "c0ck".

Have the brakes been tightened or was that a lucky one-off?

a lucky one I think. I've used them five or six times now and have only been able to skid one of them. Likewise, I also thought I was pretty rad.

you just need to yank the back brake to skid them, not that hard.

I had this on the first one i ever rode, it got locked up with a tyre that resembles a 50p piece, it was impossible to brake without it locking up. Thought about reporting it as broken but then didn't know if this would affect my "£300" credit line and my Boris no claims bonus. Did put a smile on my face!

I had one with properly tightened brakes the other day, accidentally pulled a few skids negotiating peds crossing over at Vauxhall, then pulled a massoive skid into the docking station. I was thinking "Rad!!" anyone who saw me must have thought "c0ck".

Have the brakes been tightened or was that a lucky one-off?

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n02/iain-sinclair/the-raging-peloton

massive tl;dr from the London Review of Books about The Barclays Cyle Hire scheme. Can I do it?

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n02/iain-sinclair/the-raging-peloton

massive tl;dr from the London Review of Books about The Barclays Cyle Hire scheme. Can I do it?

It contains this paragraph:
The elite of the pod world are the cycle couriers. I asked Matt Sherratt, an artist and former courier, how he survived. ‘Forty is the watershed,’ he said. ‘When you’re young, you are pretty sharp-witted.’ On a fixed-wheel bike you are ‘part of the experience, you dart through the traffic.’ The trick is to live by your own instincts and to break every rule of the road. ‘If there’s a whole row of traffic, you’re not going to stay in that row. You get out, to the opposite side of the road. You will absolutely rip down the other side, the wrong way. You’ve got clear visibility, it’s perfectly safe. It’s safer to just jump the lights. You create an open space.’ Being a courier for someone like Metro, the photographic agency, gives you the uniform, ‘beautifully branded kit’. You are a king of the city. In Australia, Matt went straight into the back of a station wagon at a zebra crossing, head first through the rear windscreen. Quality helmet. He made it back to London, where he hit a pothole and went to hospital with a rack of broken ribs.

So I think we can safely conclude that the rest of the article will be shit too.

One more uninteresting stat from the data know that I've worked out how to map the data.

There is an East West divide when looking at average journey time. The stations round the edge also have longer trip time on average.

http://mattshepherd.tumblr.com/

[U][/U]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12275039

Tried them and don't really like them but come in handy for when my bike is unavailable.

Have used them a couple of times. Great to have then around.

Yes, we gave them a whirl the other week, found them not too bad. Heavy, obviously, tiny gearing, dreadful saddle, but they rode OK. Slow progress though and hard work – a couple of miles is enough on one; useful for short-hops which I think is the point of them anyway.

Good fun when you get into a race with another one. Slowest and hardest race ever...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12275039

I joined when it went live and used it a lot in the summer. Walking past them now I have noticed how a lot have had their rear reflector smashed off and in general sorry state.