The boris bike scheme
I live in Central London, so the Barclays Cycle hire scheme is useful to me. This is the area it covers:
The scheme in general
There are two ways of hiring: membership or casual use. Unfortunately casual use, where you can just stick a credit/debit card into the slot and use it without much hassle, is not yet available. Membership is bloody complicated.
You have to pay £3 for a KEY to use it, which will be posted to you. You can have more than one key.
You have to pay an ACCESS FEE. This can be £1 a day, £5 a week or £45 a year.
You can HIRE the bike for free for the first 30 minutes. After that, it costs £1 for up to 60 minutes, £4 for up to 90 minutes, and then gets prohibitively expensive after that. See http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/cycling/14811.aspx for more details on costs.
The idea is that you don't hire the bike for the day. You go on a short ride, say from Liverpool Street Station to Oxford Circus where you find a docking station to leave your bike for someone else to use. Then when you are ready to go back to Liverpool Street Station again you look for a docking station and hire a bike again and dock it when you get to Liverpool Street Station.
The docking stations will sometimes be completely full so you can't dock your bike there. They all have computers which can tell you if there are spaces at the docking stations locally. The docking stations will sometimes be completely empty (or only have bikes that have been reported broken so you can't hire them). The computer on the docking station will tell you if there are any bikes at docking stations locally. In most places, you will only have to walk a few minutes to find a bike. It's trickier on the fringes of the scheme; I find that the more isolate docking stations are often empty. You can also go to https://web.barclayscyclehire.tfl.gov.uk/maps to check the availability of bikes at docking stations before you leave home/work... this is only useful if you live/work close to the docking stations, as people may have taken the bikes by the time you get there.
My experience and opinions of the scheme
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
I have bought a year's access for £45. I cycle several times a week, and often make several journeys a day. Many, if not most, of my journeys are under thirty minutes and are therefore free (apart from the access fee).
Frequent journeys:
Bloomsbury (home) to Liverpool Street Station (under 20 minutes usually), and back after either Bi Coffee or a train journey.
Home to St John's Wood, then walk to Swiss Cottage Leisure Centre.
Home to Warren Street, often combined with a busy day of doing stuff which probably includes some walking and/or boris biking.
Home to Regent's Park/around Regent's Park to home.
Home to Hyde Park/around Hyde Park to home. (Will often stop for coffee/to make my journey cheaper.)
Home to Angel for shopping, will walk/bus or cycle back home depending on how much shopping.
* People have asked me why I want to cycle for an hour or an hour and a half when the scheme is designed for short journeys. It's purely a fitness thing. I figure that people pay to use the gym, so I may as well pay to use a bike for fitness reasons. I rarely use it for an hour and a half or more, so it doesn't bother me that I have to pay a chunk of money occasionally. Going for a long ride out of the bike hire scheme area is occasionally fun; of course I make sure that I dock it when I finish, and that I don't leave it outside a public toilet.
The scheme in general
There are two ways of hiring: membership or casual use. Unfortunately casual use, where you can just stick a credit/debit card into the slot and use it without much hassle, is not yet available. Membership is bloody complicated.
You have to pay £3 for a KEY to use it, which will be posted to you. You can have more than one key.
You have to pay an ACCESS FEE. This can be £1 a day, £5 a week or £45 a year.
You can HIRE the bike for free for the first 30 minutes. After that, it costs £1 for up to 60 minutes, £4 for up to 90 minutes, and then gets prohibitively expensive after that. See http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/cycling/14811.aspx for more details on costs.
The idea is that you don't hire the bike for the day. You go on a short ride, say from Liverpool Street Station to Oxford Circus where you find a docking station to leave your bike for someone else to use. Then when you are ready to go back to Liverpool Street Station again you look for a docking station and hire a bike again and dock it when you get to Liverpool Street Station.
The docking stations will sometimes be completely full so you can't dock your bike there. They all have computers which can tell you if there are spaces at the docking stations locally. The docking stations will sometimes be completely empty (or only have bikes that have been reported broken so you can't hire them). The computer on the docking station will tell you if there are any bikes at docking stations locally. In most places, you will only have to walk a few minutes to find a bike. It's trickier on the fringes of the scheme; I find that the more isolate docking stations are often empty. You can also go to https://web.barclayscyclehire.tfl.gov.uk/maps to check the availability of bikes at docking stations before you leave home/work... this is only useful if you live/work close to the docking stations, as people may have taken the bikes by the time you get there.
My experience and opinions of the scheme
Advantages:
- I live less than five minutes walk away from 4 different docking stations. I live up to ten minutes walk away from 15-20 docking stations. I can always get a bike near to home.
- I don't have to do any bicycle maintenance! If I find that the boris bike I've hired is faulty, I can return it to the docking station and press the red fault key, then hire another bike. This is a major advantage for me, as I get really panicky about bike maintenance.
- As long as I dock the bicycle, I don't have to worry about it being stolen. I've had many bikes stolen in London over the years.
- I don't have to buy bike accessories (lights/basket/locks), and I don't have to replace these when they get stolen or vandalised.
- I don't have to haul a bike up two flights of stairs so it won't be stolen. MAJOR advantage with a) my bad back and b) my lack of space. The prospect of carrying a bike up and down stairs each time I used it made it too difficult to use a bike when depressed.
- I love love love the lack of responsibility that comes with the hire scheme as compared to the responsibility of owning a bike. This makes a lot of difference when I'm depressed.
Disadvantages:
- The area covered by the scheme is frustratingly small for me. I often go to Kentish Town, Highgate, Hackney and Finsbury Park; there are no docking stations there yet. It'd be particularly handy to be able to cycle to Hackney as I can get a train from there to Chingford or Enfield.
- If I want to get a good workout by cycling*, I have to pay either £1 or £4. This doesn't stop me though. Sometimes I break up my workout by doing some walking or jogging in between cycling; I can dock my bike in Regent's Park or Hyde Park, exercise or go to a cafe, then get back on the bike.
- You have to allow up to ten-fifteen minutes to either find a bike or find a space to dock a bike in peak times. This can be frustrating, especially if your journey is going to take less than 15 minutes or if you are in a rush/tired.
- If you want an additional key, you get charged for the same access period as your main key. This is annoying to me. I pay £45 for yearly access, and if I had an additional key for friends I would rather just use the daily access of £1 when I was going to use it. Hopefully the casual use scheme will kick in soon!
- Some people will dislike that the scheme is sponsored by Barclays bank.
- If most of your rides are over half an hour, it works out as more expensive than owning a cheap bike which you do your own maintenance on.
- The bikes are heavy and have a wide turning circle. I can get up to a steady pace of 12-14mph regularly though.
I have bought a year's access for £45. I cycle several times a week, and often make several journeys a day. Many, if not most, of my journeys are under thirty minutes and are therefore free (apart from the access fee).
Frequent journeys:
Bloomsbury (home) to Liverpool Street Station (under 20 minutes usually), and back after either Bi Coffee or a train journey.
Home to St John's Wood, then walk to Swiss Cottage Leisure Centre.
Home to Warren Street, often combined with a busy day of doing stuff which probably includes some walking and/or boris biking.
Home to Regent's Park/around Regent's Park to home.
Home to Hyde Park/around Hyde Park to home. (Will often stop for coffee/to make my journey cheaper.)
Home to Angel for shopping, will walk/bus or cycle back home depending on how much shopping.
* People have asked me why I want to cycle for an hour or an hour and a half when the scheme is designed for short journeys. It's purely a fitness thing. I figure that people pay to use the gym, so I may as well pay to use a bike for fitness reasons. I rarely use it for an hour and a half or more, so it doesn't bother me that I have to pay a chunk of money occasionally. Going for a long ride out of the bike hire scheme area is occasionally fun; of course I make sure that I dock it when I finish, and that I don't leave it outside a public toilet.