Cycle hire scheme

[ffutures]

Three or four weeks ago a yellow "parking bay suspended" sign went up over three car parking spaces next to the place where I usually park my motorbike at work, saying that the work would start at the beginning of last week

Comments

[bohemiancoast]

We were in Montreal last summer; they have this scheme (I believe the London scheme is the same contractors as the Montreal scheme), it is clearly working pretty well. There is a sort of catch which is that Montreal is quite hilly so there is a tendency for bikes to gravitate from the top to the bottom of the hills. Obviously Montreal is also much smaller than London. We were staying right by a bike rack and there were available bikes most of the time; there were several other racks on our short walk into town.
Montreal also has a great many narrow streets though I suspect not as narrow as London's. A lot of the bike racks were in to my mind sensible places like tube station and supermarket car parks.

[ffutures]

The places I've seen so far don't look very sensible - side streets rather than places that a casual visitor / hirer will easily see.

The one near my work is a side street off Marylebone High Street, which is not particularly near any station or other obvious place people will want to visit. There's another off Baker Street, but the other side of Marylebone road and three blocks from the station - that's a road that is already too narrow for the traffic that uses it. They've got more on that road between Baker Street and Marylebone High Street, and I really can't imagine who will use so many bicycles in an area that isn't particularly touristy.

[ffutures]

I think as you say it's to encourage quick rides rather than casual biking around town.

[the_magician]

Their website says
If you'd like to cycle for longer than a couple of hours it might be cheaper for you to use a company that specialises in hiring bicycles.

So you're right.

[the_magician]

Cheaper still if you go for the annual option, £100/year (for season ticket holders), and they replace the bike every three months so the one you had can be serviced.

£250/year for non-season ticket holders.

Plus £100 deposit.

For the Barclays bike hire scheme, you can pay £45/year (plus £3 for a key) and have as many free half hour rides as you wish.

I see one of the prime purposes of the Barclays/Mayor scheme would be to replace some buses and taxis, where you come out of an office/pub/restaurant, grab a bicycle and cycle over to the train station/tube station/next destination.

And it means not having to carry the brompton around with you or worry about it being stolen while you're in a show/pub etc.

[ffutures]

Thanks - don't tend to go there on foot, not a boutiquey sort of person.

[fjm]

Feorag got there before me, but as well as the market (which also sells organic veg) it's on the edge of the Bethnal Green curry district, and next to Liverpool St station. Not sure where they expect the bicycles to cycle to.

[the_magician]

There are a lot of people who work around there, or who might want to go from their office to the market at lunchtime (I guess).

It does look like their primary market is for people doing short journeys inside zone 1.

[coth]

That's a classic 'pay attention / get the point?' charging structure - we really would like you to use this bike by actually riding it point-to-point and giving it back so someone else can do likewise, and we really don't want you to take it for long rides out of range of the docking stations, and we really really don't want you keeping it all day or taking it home with you, and we don't think those last two are things you want to do either. Charging structures for car parks - cheap for the first couple of hours, then rapidly getting much more expensive per hour - are very similar for very similar reasons

[ffutures]

Don't get me wrong - I hope that it works, but I'm just not convinced that they've selected the locations well, for any of the ones I've seen so far, and a couple look barking mad. I would have thought near hotels, near stations, etc., but that doesn't seem to be what they're doing.

[the_magician]

400 docking stations in zone 1 (about every 300 metres), with just over 10,000 spaces ... is what it says on their website
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/cycling/12445.aspx

[ffutures]

OK - obviously I've only seen the tip of the iceberg. 400 stations does make more sense if at least some of them are where tourists etc. will be able to find them.

[armb]

Cambridge had a scheme in October 1993 that was an utter and dismal failure, but it was also very different from the modern schemes. The charging scheme consisted of "the bikes are free and not secured in any way - oh look, all the bikes have been stolen".

http://www.iankitching.me.uk/history/cam/old/green-bike.html
http://www.camcycle.org.uk/newsletters/63/article14.html (mostly about Lyon, but the Cambridge scheme gets a mention near the bottom).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_sharing_system#Europe has a list of other schemes.