The Scoop

Why Boris shouldn't be over the moon about his cycle hire scheme

Adam Bienkov | Wednesday 2 February, 2011 10:43

“Cycle Hire customers cycle to the moon and back 13 times in the first six months” applauded a Transport for London press release yesterday, which sounds impressive until you actually start to think about it.

“More than 2.5million journeys had been undertaken on the hire bikes since they were introduced on July 30” explains the Evening Standard, which again sounds impressive until you realise that over 6 million journeys have been made on London’s buses since yesterday.

And whilst 2.5 million journeys have been made on hire bikes in six months, over a similar period over 1000 million journeys will have been made on the back of the proverbial Clapham Omnibus.

As I’ve written for Snipe before, the cycle hire scheme is a fun but niche activity, enjoyed by a privileged few.

And new figures released to the London Assembly this week shows that it is not getting much less niche very quickly.

The previously registration-only scheme was opened to “casual users” in December and take-up has been strikingly low.

So far an average of little over a thousand users a day have paid for the scheme via their credit cards, that’s only a handful per docking station, per day

And with 7-8 million people living in London, Boris’s “cycling revolution” looks unlikely to take over the streets any time soon.

---