*Former University of Waterloo student and ACT Director, Eric Pisani, writes about his experiences using London's new Barclay's Cycle Hire.
I recently went back to London, England, one of my favourite cities in the world, and this time I was eager to see a side of London I hadn’t seen before. Luckily for me, there was a new phenomenon in the Capital that would let me see London from the seat of a bike. In the span of the previous 9 months, it had become a tourist attraction in its own right, luring visitors from across the UK, Europe and even the world to check out the success it had become and the new look it has given to London – I’m talking about Barclays Cycle Hire, London’s public bike share service.
The bike share can be seen EVERYWHERE across central London. Docking stations are literally never more than a couple blocks away, no matter your location, as this map shows. You practically can’t turn a corner without seeing someone riding one of the signature blue bikes. The bikes also seem to fit in seamlessly with the streetscape and the other eclectic vehicles on the roads of London; the impression I got was that one day the blue bike might be as synonymous with London as the black cab, the red double-decker bus, or the tri-colour Tube train.
So how does it work, exactly? It works similarly to other Public Bike System Company bikeshare programs, such as BIXI in Montreal (and as of this May, Toronto and Ottawa as well). Anyone can go up to a docking station where bikes are parked in stalls, and rent one at the electronic kiosk for as long as they wish, before returning it to any other docking station in the city. No membership is required, but you can become a member for just £45 a year (or $70), giving you a special access key for bikes which speeds up the rental process at stations and saves you from paying access fees.
The cost of using the Cycle Hire is made up of access and usage fees, which are quite affordable and easy to understand, once you’re familiar with them. To access bikes for 24 hours, you pay a fee of just £1. You’re then charged based on how long you use a bike for a trip – a half hour or less is completely free of usage charges, up to an hour of use is £1, and then it gets steadily more expensive as an hour and a half is £4 and over 2 hours is £10. You can pay by credit or debit card at the kiosks – no need to worry about having exact change or petty theft/vandalism for cash at the stations.
Clearly, the Cycle Hire has been set up to give the greatest benefit to quick users and encourage short-term use, which is likely to ensure a constant turnaround of bikes and to make people pay more for longer use, which is only fair. Still, for only £1, which is roughly $1.60, you can access bikes for a 24-hour period as many times as you like. And, if each trip you take on a bike is half an hour or less, that’s free! So in theory, you could get a lot of cycling in on one day for only a £1 – that’s cheaper than the Tube, bus, tram, or taxi!
After paying, you get an access code that you enter into a keypad on a bike stall to release a bike for use. This is where I encountered some difficulties – the keypad doesn’t seem to respond when you push a button, and it’s hard to tell if you’re entering the code in correctly (note: the folks at Public Bike System seem to have fixed this little glitch with their latest bike share system in Ottawa, which uses the same bike stall design). After a couple tries, I successfully had a bike and was free to explore one of the world’s greatest cities as a cyclist. The bike is a bit heavy, but sturdy, and handles quite well. It has 3 gears, a bell, and a kickstand, as well as a basket, so you can do some shopping with it.
In my three days in the Capital, I didn’t see anyone with a Cycle Hire bike that wasn’t either smiling, laughing with other cyclist friends, or getting where they needed to go quickly and safely. In contrast to Toronto, I never witnessed a cyclist in a tangle with a motorist, almost see an accident involving a cyclist, nor did I feel unsafe riding a bike myself in the city with other vehicles around me. Perhaps this is due to the fact that London has many segregated bike lanes, textured/coloured pavement for cycle lanes, narrower streets, and more people on the streets generally than vehicles, which means pedestrians and cyclists naturally get more consideration and right-of-way. Coming from North America where streets are (in the words of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford) largely for cars and trucks, this is truly refreshing and inspiring. This is especially so when you realize that the street is the basic element of public space in a city.
Personally, I plan on returning to London in the fall to start a Master’s Degree, and I am definitely going to go for the annual membership. For £45, I’ll get unlimited access to bikes for a year! Having cycling as a viable option means I won’t have to shell out the high costs of a monthly Travelcard or Student Oyster card, and be able to use pay-as-you-go on transit and walk to meet the rest of my transport needs.
Barclays Cycle Hire is definitely an example of a bikeshare system that the Region of Waterloo should consider, for its user-friendliness, attractiveness, convenience, and affordability. It’s just a matter of mustering the political will to get something like it off the ground.
For more information on Barclays Cycle Hire, and Transport for London, you can visit the TfL website here.
Cheers,
Eric Pisani
Former Director, ACT
BES (Urban Planning)
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