London bike sharing a success

Bike-sharing has been around since as early as the 1960s when the first community bike-sharing scheme was introduced in the Netherlands, but it lacked formal sharing systems and was overly-reliant on the good nature of the public, leading to mass theft, which ultimately destroyed the system.

The idea of sharing bikes for short trips around city centres did not stop there, though it would not be until 1995 that Europe once more introduced the world’s first bike-sharing system, this time in Copenhagen. The bike’s were specially designed not to have any parts that could be used on other bicycles and were part of a network by which users had to register to hire the bikes, which vastly reduced theft.

Operated by ByCyklen, a company formed especially for the operation of the bike-sharing system, the initiative took off and was emulated around the world, from Beijing in China to Mexico City in Mexico, the idea has proven hugely popular and indeed the launch of London’s own bike-sharing network was delayed initially due to greater than expected demand.

When Barclays Cycle Hire was launched it was on a much larger scale than the so-called ‘60s experiment’ in the Netherlands, which involved only a handful of bikes. Experience has shown that in order for such a network to be effective, it must fully penetrate the city centre, making it as convenient as possible for commuters to cycle around town rather than driving, thereby reducing congestion.

London’s Barclays Cycle Hire was launched with over 5000 bikes available at 315 docking stations around the core of London, providing bike-sharing availability to an area of the city around 44 square kilometres in size. Although it is called the Barclays Cycle Hire, it is actually operated by Serco, which formed a new subsidiary for the £140 million venture, which received £25 million in funding from Barclays, as well as funding from Transport for London (TfL).

The aim of London’s cycle share project is to increase bicycle ridership by 400% by 2025, which the city government believes will have a huge impact on the local environment and standard of living, as well as health, as cycling is said to be healthier than sitting in traffic with blood pressure levels rising and exhaust fumes infiltrating the air-conditioning.

The bike-sharing docking stations are located in several boroughs around London including Camden, Hackney, Lambeth, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Westminster, City of London and Royal Parks in central London with a special focus on being near major train stations and subway stations.

The ultimate goal of the project is to fully penetrate the core of London so that when in the city centre one is never more than 300 metres from a docking station, which will subsequently mean that one is never more than a few hundred metres from the destinations where they work, shop and carry out various other activities and errands.

Like other systems around the world, London’s cycle hire network is fully automated with electronic kiosks at each docking station where one has their card swiped to unlock a bike, the kiosk at the next station then records the time taken and charges appropriately.

City officials have told London news media that only three bikes have been stolen thus far, while one accident has reportedly taken place in September. This even though several hundred thousand journeys are recorded each day, undertaken by over 90,000 people who have signed up to the system, which also makes the program’s safety record one of the highest of all form of mass transit in terms of journeys taken relative to malfunctions and crashes.

The initiative was championed by Boris Johnson who was Mayor of London when the network was launched; he pushed for its implementation and remains a major supporter, as well as an avid environmental campaigner, despite having worked as an automotive journalist earlier in his career.