| There has to be a catch, right? Well, the main one is the bikes themselves. Any regular cyclist will be disappointed. They are heavy. Really heavy! About 20kg, in fact. Their weight and design gives them spectacularly ponderous handling: you almost feel like you're riding a moped rather than a bicycle. And the gearing is, frankly, ridiculous. First gear is so low as to be pointless, 2nd gear is what should be 1st, and 3rd (top) gear is good only for about 10mph.
But we have to remember the role of these bikes, which is hop-on, hop-off use by infrequent cyclists wearing suits or dresses. And they bikes are, actually, very much fit-for-purpose.
Part of the weight is due to the very enclosed rear-wheel and chain, so you can ride one in business clothing without risk of getting oil or dirt on your clothes. Hub gears make them a doddle to ride by even the most ham-fisted, and the low gearing means they can be ridden no matter how unfit you are. All cables are inside the oversized frame to guard against vandalism. Permanent dynamo lighting means there's no need to remember to switch on lights or risk of batteries going flat (they have standlights, which means the lights remain for a few mins while waiting at traffic lights). They have a sturdy luggage-carrier suitable for a laptop bag. In short, they do the job they were designed for - let anyone ride them - extremely well.
I have a Brompton, which is ideal for central London use, but even with the compact fold there are times when it's a bit of a hassle to have the bike & bag at my destination, so even for me Boris Bikes make a great deal of sense. With many more docking stations than there are tube stations, they offer something very close to door-to-door transport in central London, and at the end of the journey you just walk away unencumbered and without having to worry about whether your own bike will be there when you get back.
There are some teething problems, as is to be expected with any new scheme. Some docking stations are completely dead, and at one I had to try my key in four separate docks before it was accepted. If you don't dock the bike properly (checking for the green light), you'll continue to be charged, and some people with multiple keys have been charged multiple times for a single use. But TfL seems to be on the case, phoning members who appear to have had the bike for a few hours, and refunding mistaken charges.
There is also an absurd situation with multiple keys. You can have up to four keys on one account, but only if you request them before first use. Once you've used a key, they cannot add extra keys to the same account, so they actually need to close the account, issue a full refund and then open a second account! So now I have to see how long they take to do that ...
But glitches aside, the service is bloody brilliant. Give it a year, and I reckon these bikes will be as much a London icon as Routemaster buses or black cabs. Just a shame they had to be sponsored to make the numbers add up, but at least we can avoid referring to them by the name of the sponsor: they are universally known as Boris Bikes. :-) |
