Bike rental scheme coming to London
Over recent weeks, I have noticed docking stations for the London Transport Cycle Hire scheme popping up all over the place. Coverage in central London is impressive – there’s 400-odd such docking stations in total, ready to serve 6,000 bikes across the capital.
The pricing for the scheme is aimed at journeys less than 30 minutes so, once you’ve paid the daily access charge, the first half an hour’s rental is free and you can make as many 30-minute trips between docking stations as you like without paying any more (provided a bike is available, of course). If you want to make longer journeys between docking stations, the costs can mount up to £50 for the day but, given you could cycle from one end of the docking station zone to the other in less than 30 minutes, it really is an unlikely and easily avoided situation.
So the only snag is bike availability in peak times – I’ll be very interested to see how this scheme takes off.
I’m certainly signing up. If I’m ever caught out without my trusty Birdy folding bike, I know how I’ll be getting about!
Thanks to cyclehireapp.com for the map visualisations of bike docking locations data from TFL – the bike rental map on the London transport site doesn’t (yet) work!