[M II A II R II K]

Early snags for the mayor of London’s pet transport project


Read More: http://www.economist.com/node/178600...60075&fsrc=rss

Interactive Bike Share Map: http://oobrien.com/vis/bikes/?city=london

London launched a municipal bicycle-hire scheme in July, with 5,000 bikes scattered around hundreds of docking stations in the centre of the city. Boris Johnson, London’s mayor (and himself a keen cyclist), has been quick to declare the initiative a success, trumpeting the fact that it accounted for 2m journeys in the first five months of operation. The blue bikes—which weigh a hefty 23kg to deter thieves—have become a common sight. Transport for London (TfL), which runs the city’s transport networks, is hoping to expand the scheme and boost cycling’s share of travel in London from its current paltry figure of around 2% of all trips.

But the project has its problems. It has not yet met its original usage target of over 50,000 trips a day, instead peaking at around 24,000 during the summer. There have been frequent complaints of local mismatches between supply and demand, with many riders suffering from the opposing problems of either being unable to find bikes to rent or being unable to find an empty rack to drop them off.

Transport officials point out that these are early days. Once TfL has more data, it says in its defence, it will tweak the location of the racks and the supply of bikes. Alas, its cycling experts were unable to design precisely the system they wanted, as many bike bays were refused planning permission by London’s local councils.

Some observers wonder whether TfL has fundamentally misjudged the nature of bike demand. Its own feasibility study, published in 2008, acknowledged that the scheme could not afford to cater for the “after-rail” market (ie, longer-distance railway passengers wanting to finish their journeys by bike), lest it be swamped by the number of commuters arriving in London every morning. Docking stations were deliberately placed away from big railway terminals. But rail commuters appear to have piled onto the bikes anyway.

The resulting tidal flow of riders into central London in the morning and then out again in the evening might explain the periodic scarcity of spaces, as it shunts bikes wholesale from peripheral racks to central ones and back again. Serco, the private firm that operates the system, uses lorries to lug bikes across London in order to free up space in crowded racks and resupply depleted ones, but does not always seem able to keep up.

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