Delay puts spoke in Boris Johnson's London bike hire scheme

Delays: An artist’s image of a bike hire point on Albert Embankment
12 April 2012

Boris Johnson's flagship £140 million bicycle hire scheme will not be ready in time.

Transport for London announced that most cyclists and tourists will have to wait until the end of next month before they can use it.

TfL said only pre-registered "members" would be able to take out the bikes from a week on Friday. Officials have delayed the full roll-out amid concerns there will not be enough bicycles on the streets to meet demand after problems installing the "docking stations".

The original intention had been to allow casual users to hire a bike simply by inserting a credit card in one of 400 docking stations in central London.

Cyclists expressed disappointment at the latest delay of a scheme which was initially meant to have started in May. One campaigner, Mark Ames, who runs the ibikelondon website, said: "I'm not surprised yet I'm disappointed. The Mayor had warned us at the launch, not everything would be 100 per cent ready.

"Come September, most of the tourists and visitors to London will have left. It seems they are stalling for a while as they try to install all the docking stations around town."

Dozens of docking stations, which each hold about 20 bikes, have begun springing up around central London. But around 100 sites had to be abandoned or were refused after battles with borough councils.

There have been longstanding concerns about the ability of TfL's contractor, Serco, to install the electronic docking stations in time and get all 6,000 bikes available for hire. Docking stations are essential as they calculate the hire charges and hold the £350 bikes securely between hire periods. Only about 300 or more of the stations will be ready next week.

Today's announcement means that only cyclists who register from Friday to become a scheme member will be able to use the bikes next week.

TfL says the bedding-in period will allow Serco to analyse where bikes are hired from and ridden to, allowing cycles to be moved to high-demand areas, and to cope with any teething problems.

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