London bike hire scheme on road to be only public transport system in profit

tomasrojo

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2010/oct/13/london-bike-hire-profit

droidus

its a rip-off though.

tomasrojo

Similarly to the DublinBike scheme, it's looking as if there are very few injuries per million journeys. It looks like good data with which to counter the received wisdom that cycling is especially dangerous.

Chips Lovell

But, but, most of them aren't wearing helmets!!!!

tomasrojo

el tonto wrote: »

But, but, most of them aren't wearing helmets!!!!

I don't know which version of the Ray D'Arcy ad you've been watching.

tomasrojo

This is quite interesting.

http://casa.ucl.ac.uk/bom

Gives you some idea of how many of the bike-share schemes are in use in various cities. Dublin seems to have very high use all the time it's open.

More here. Mandatory helmet law does seem to be depressing any possible interest in the Melbourne scheme.
http://www.copenhagenize.com/2010/10/bike-share-usage-comparisons.html

paddymacsporran

London bike scheme is limited.

Was at the cycle show and wanted to hire bikes to get back to the station but you have to register and be a London resident to use it.

Lumen

tomasrojo wrote: »

Mandatory helmet law does seem to be depressing any possible interest in the Melbourne scheme.
http://www.copenhagenize.com/2010/10/bike-share-usage-comparisons.html

Ha! Slip-slop-slap that you bunch of excessively sensible losers!

tomasrojo

Cycle hire scheme in Auckland has folded. Another scheme that had to contend with a mandatory helmet law, I think.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10687659

tomasrojo

On the subject of the Melbourne bike-share scheme, I thought this was interesting. (Maybe has been posted already.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPjvZlAl_js

tomasrojo

Trends in the Lyon bike-share scheme looked at in Technology Review.

http://memex.naughtons.org/archives/2010/12/02/12385

They looked at 11.6 million bicycle trips in Lyon between May 2005 and December 2007. The result is the first robust characterisation of urban bikers’ behaviour, they say.

Some of what they found is unsurprising. Over an average trip, cyclists travel 2.49 km in 14.7 minutes so their average speed is about 10 km/h. That compares well with the average car speed in inner cities across Europe.

During the rush hour, however, the average speed rises to almost 15 km/h, a speed which outstrips the average car speed. And that’s not including the time it takes to find a place to park which is much easier for a Velo’v bike than a car.

Other results reveal the habits of the urban cyclist for the first time. For example, there is a clear peak in average speed at 7.45 am and 8.45 am on working days, when presumably there is rush to get to work. The average speed drops to a more leisurely 10 km/h at weekends.

Curiously, the Wednesday morning speeds are systematically higher than on other days, even though there is no change in other factors such as the number of cars. This, say Jensen and co, is probably because women tend to stay at home and look after their children on a Wednesday in France. So the higher proportion of men pushes up the average speed.

The data also shows that bike journeys between two points are shorter in distance than the corresponding journey by car. There are no bike lanes in Lyon so this suggests that cyclists use other techniques to make short cuts, say Jensen and co. Their shocking conclusion is that cyclists often ride on the pavement, along bus lanes and the wrong way up one way streets.

That kind of information will be useful for urban planners. For the first time they have real data to show where to build cycle lanes and how well they will be used…

Off-topic: I like American English and American expressions, but calling cyclists "bikers" grates with me (mainly because I always think of motorcyclists first). "To bike" sounds odd too. But it's hardly illogical, so who cares, I suppose.

Bluefoam

I hate when Americans use the term 'bicyclist'

Doctor Bob

I'm guessing there are few subscribers here to the TransportXtra online newsletter, so this may have escaped your attention.

(No hyperlink, I'm afraid, as the article is for subscribers only. It's from today's edition.)

BIKE HIRE: A white, male, middle-class pursuit?

White men from higher-income earning households are the biggest users of London’s cycle hire scheme launched last summer.

A survey of a few thousand users of the Barclays cycle hire scheme found that 68% of respondents were aged 25-44, three-quarters were men, and 88% were White. About a third of London residents are from ethnic minority backgrounds.

Users are also disproportionately from better off households. “Six in ten scheme users have a household income over £50,000 per year, compared to around a quarter of London residents, and only 5% of users have a household income of less than £20,000 per year, compared to four in ten London residents,” says TfL.

“Cyclists tend to be white, male, young professionals and the profile of Barclays Cycle Hire users is fairly typical of this,” it adds.

TfL says the introduction of casual use of the bicycles last month could broaden the scheme’s appeal.

Asked how they would have previously made their selected bike hire trip, 35% of respondents said they would have used the Underground, 29% would have walked, 23% would have used the bus, 5% would have used their own bicycle, 3% taxi, and 1% car or van.

Bluefoam

Bluefoam wrote: »

I hate when Americans use the term 'bicyclist'

Ya, are they implying that we swing both ways?

monument

Cyclist is far more inclusive really. It includes tricycle users as well as bicycle users. So, we're clearly more progressive.

Doctor Bob

http://vimeo.com/19486470

This animation shows the real-time behaviour of hire bikes in London on October 4th 2010, the day of a major tube strike, and the busiest day for the scheme to date.

Departure times and journey durations are real; routing is calculated from OSM data; average speed from journey duration and route length.

Data collation and routing by Ollie O'Brien (CASA-UCL); Visualization created by Martin Austwick (ENFOLDing project/CASA-UCL) using Processing.

Strangely soothing. I could watch it for hours.

Jmcmen

Was in London at the weekend and the scheme is only terrible compaired to the Dublin one. Very slow stations and even heavier clunkier bikes.
Had to go to 4 stands before I got my credit card accepted

tomasrojo

The Guardian has a little article about the design of the Barclays bikes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/bike-blog/interactive/2011/feb/17/design-barclay

I was quite surprised by how low down the rear lights are.

Ghost Estate

Dublin Bikes.. bah

I'd rather get a bus - it would be easier to pedal that.