Nuxx:4e31aeff$0$2941$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!goblin2!goblin.stu.neva.ru!multikabel.net!newsfeed20.multikabel.net!dedekind.zen.co.uk!zen.net.uk!hamilton.zen.co.uk!reader02.news.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <4e31aeff$0$2941$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: London cycle hire scheme to expand west Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2011 19:48:31 +0100 References: <48idnWtmtt58O6zTnZ2dnUVZ8iCdnZ2d@eclipse.net.uk> Lines: 52 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; en-US; rv:1.9.2.18) Gecko/20110616 Thunderbird/3.1.11 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <48idnWtmtt58O6zTnZ2dnUVZ8iCdnZ2d@eclipse.net.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: Zen Internet NNTP-Posting-Host: a54df858.news.zen.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=231Z70Gn;e`BNZiDJBlOh`YjZGX^207Pk`Kdf_fY[lIFYk "London's mass cycle hire scheme is to expand into new parts of the city > following a first year of operation which saw more than 6m journeys > using the distinctive, blue-and-grey bikes. The expansion was announced > by London's mayor, Boris Johnson, at an event before this weekend's > anniversary of the scheme, modelled on similar systems in Paris and > elsewhere, and the biggest public cycling project in the UK. > > The London version was launched amid gloomy predictions of possible > indifference, mass vandalism and theft, and likely carnage as many > thousands of inexperienced, helmet-less cyclists took to the capital's > busy streets. More or less all of these have been proven wrong. Bike use > has peaked at almost 30,000 trips a day, and while there have been a > small number of minor injuries to users the scheme has, as yet, > experienced no major accidents." > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/28/london-cycle-hire-scheme-expand-west

Good that it's expanding, although from what I've heard, it's very difficult to get hold of a bike at the popular docking stations in the morning (e.g. those near railway termini), and equally difficult to find a "slot" there in the evening. They really need to sort that out, although quite how is another matter. Presumably they just need to keep creating extra capacity at these places (given that "You can't build your way out of congestion" has been shown to be utter agenda-driven bollocks).

It must be particularly irritating not to be able to find a slot when your free half hour's nearly up. Although I did think of a way round this: register an account yourself, then ask someone else (who never uses Boris Bikes) to register an account as well. Get them to give you their keycard. Then use your keycard as normal, but if and when you can't find a slot to return your bike to, you can free one up by taking a bike out under the other person's keycard. That then gives you a further half hour to find an empty slot (and, if necessary, you can just keep "swapping" keycards until you do....)

Of course this also works if you want a bike for more than half an hour, as long as you stay in an area with docking stations (although maybe you could just use the one keycard for that...I'm not sure if it lets you take another bike just after you've returned one).

There don't seem to be many people on URC who use Boris Bikes. Until they sort out the problems with it (in particular the capacity problem), then assuming you're starting from and finishing at the same place each day, I reckon it would probably be easier just to buy a cheap bike and leave it in London overnight (so if you were commuting into Paddington then you could just retrieve your bike from there each morning and then leave it there each night). If someone nicks it then at least it's cheap (which would hopefully mean they went for a more expensive target anyway). I'm sure commuting into London is stressful enough without finding that you can't get, or return, a bike.