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.

As the time got closer someone painted marks on the road to show the areas that were to be dug up - to my surprise it extended out of the three original bays, across a bit that was no parking, and into the motorbike bay. I was a little surprised, but there's another bay about a hundred yards away so it wasn't a huge problem. Except that two days out of the five I ended up having to park much further away because the bay was full.

What they've done is put in the bases for machines that will eventually dispense bicycles for hire. I have no trouble with this, but if I understand the charging model I can only assume that someone is being VERY optimistic. You have to pay a subscription (£1 a day or £5 a week), then use of a bike is free for the first half hour, then

£1 up to an hour
£4 1.5 hours
£6 2 hours
£10 2.5 hours
£15 3 hours
£35 6 hours
then £50 to a maximum of 24 hours

In order to make this work Transport for London are going to be building large metal structures IN THE ROAD on some fairly narrow streets - the things that they installed are just anchor points that will eventually be replaced by the machines. And they take up a surprising amount of space - looks like about a yard per bicycle.

This is an artist's impression that doesn't make it clear how much space this takes up:



I can't imagine what city this is supposed to be - it certainly isn't any part of London I recognize, and I suspect it's Boris Johnson's idea of what London would be like if he could only get rid of all those annoying cars.

I can sort of understand the idea but I suspect that they may be greatly underestimating how many bikes are going to be stolen, vandalised, etc., and overestimating how many people will want to use the scheme, given how horrible London's traffic is. They also seem to be going out of their way to put the hire points where they will obstruct fire engines, large trucks, etc.

Anyone live in a city that has a scheme like this? If so, does it actually work?

http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/?s=cycle+hire

is a search that shows some articles about this. Don't expect them to be unbiased, it's the Mayor of London's office.

Meanwhile I'm wondering if Westminster City Council are even aware that the motorbike bay is affected by this and are planning to do anything about it. Since they're a separate entity to TFL it's entirely possible that there's been a breakdown in communications, if so this may take a while to resolve.

Comments

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Their pricing policy seems very odd, ludicrous at longer times. I suppose that's to force people to use the official docking stations at each end of the journey rather than leaving the bike outside a shop.

Southwest trains hire a Brompton scheme is much more attractive, £5 a week for season ticket holders, £5 a day for casual use.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

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

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.

[feorag.livejournal.com]

The picture is the area by Spitalfields market, or whatever that old market turned into trendy boutiques near Liverpool Street is called.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

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

[fjm.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.

[were-gopher.livejournal.com]

You beat me to it. I took one look at that church and thought Hawksmoor but decided to read the comments before googling where it was.

[coth.livejournal.com]

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.

This scheme is about having the freedom to actually ride a bike without the worry involved in looking after it when you're not riding it. My guess is when electric cars become economic they'll do something similar with those too, for similar reasons.

Similar bike schemes are now in operation in a number of cities - Paris went first a few years ago - and they've got a pretty good idea what the problems are overall. There is no particular reason why it shouldn't work in London. The bikes themselves are specially designed to be good workhorses and unattractive toys. I also expect that when they find they've got a docking location wrong for some reason they'll move it, but they won't necessarily see making the road narrower as a problem because it will slow down traffic overall and that is probably seen as a good thing in the wider view.

The bikes are also part of an overall strategy (which I broadly support) to reduce carbon emissions and other vehicle pollution in London and improve the health of its citizens, and sits alongside various other measures for winkling people out of their cars. It doesn't have to please everybody all the time, only some people some of the time.

I look forward with interest to the results.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.livejournal.com]

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.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Charging structures for car parks - cheap for the first couple of hours, then rapidly getting much more expensive per hour

That's not the case in Toronto. The first time period is the most expensive, it then gets cheaper up to the daily maximum. The cheapest thing to do is get there early (most lots have early-bird specials) and stay all day.

(I'm actually at the situation where it's cheaper for me to drive than take public transit, as the three transit fares (each way) a trip downtown costs me are more expensive than parking downtown, especially on weekends.)

[armb.livejournal.com]

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.

Red bikes

[3pitaka.livejournal.com]

Where I live, there was a no-pay scheme which allowed people to pick up a bike painted bright red, ride it around for as long as wanted, and then drop it off for someone to pick it up. The bike was pretty low quality, and presumably the idea was that the cost of painting and repairing the bike up for resale would be more than the bike was worth. The scheme may, however, have underestimated the extent to which some people are determined just to wreck any good thing in order to prove that they have power.

It's an inherent tension in relations between authorities and citizens. On the one hand, citizens want to be trusted; they don't want to be condescended to or treated like infants; and they don't want a lot of regulation, or a lot of expense, impeding their enjoyment of public goods. And that's all very fair stuff to think.

On the other hand, when given all that, their first instinct is to go and trash it as a way of thumbing their noses at authority. Which, in turn, leads to them not being trusted, and being treated like infants. It's a vicious cycle.

Now the Red Bike idea has been resurrected with a new twist; you pick up the bike and leave your credit card number, and you get the bike for a limited period of time -- like a library book. If you don't bring it back on time, or you bring it back damaged, you pay for it; if you do bring it back, no problem. But in any case there are no machines and no fee schedules. That would put a crimp in the basic idea of the plan, which is to encourage bike riding.

Re: Red bikes

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

They've tried schemes like that in the UK with mixed success - see links to the cambridge scheme in armb's post. Given London's size I think the scheme pretty much has to be one that requires a quick turn-around, or they will soon run out of bikes.