London launched its bike-sharing program on Friday, joining other forward-looking cities seeking to reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality by making bicycles readily available.
The London system, dubbed Barclay's Cycle Hire for its sponsorship by the financial services chain, has distributed 6,000 bicycles to 400 docking stations.
That's a smaller start than the Velib system in Paris, which launched with 10,000 bicycles 3 years ago and has grown to 25,000 bicycles. But it's larger than two roll-outs in the US this summer — Minneapolis's Nice Ride Minnesota with 700 bicycles at 65 kiosks and Denver B-cycle with 500 bicycles at 50 docking stations.
Although Paris was the largest system, it has been surpassed by Hangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai in China.
Costs
People needing the bicycles in London register for 1 pound a day or 45 pounds a year; that's about $1.56 a day or $70 a year. After registering, the first half-hour of use is free. After that, one hour is about $1.50, two hours is about $9, etc.
The pricing is designed to keep the bicycles in circulation. The designers of the system want it to replace short car or bus trips.
The London operators say they're hoping for about 15,000 registered subscribers by launch day. The system is London Mayor Boris Johnson's ways to increase bicycling in the city by 400% by 2025.
The Bixi system
London isn't the only city in the UK with a bike-share system. Smaller bike hire “schemes” are up and running in Blackpool, Cardiff and Reading.
Barclay's Cycle Hire uses a system developed by Montreal's Bixi: The Public Bike System Co. Other cities using the Bixi system include Minneapolis and Melbourne, Australia, and, of course, Montreal.
The two-month-old Melbourne system has had very low use — about 70 rentals a day — because of a citywide helmet law that carries a hefty fine.
In Montreal, the Bixi system already has counted 1.6 million trips by its 29,000 subscribers. That's a lot of trips considering that the system is shut down for half the year because of the weather.
Meanwhile, Chicago is testing a 100-bicycle system starting this week based on the B-cycle system.
Barclay's
Barclay's gets to put its name on the system and plaster its name all over the bicycles because it forked over nearly 20% of the cost of the system. The bikes are built to last 15 years and cover 60,000 miles. They'll be redistributed to docking stations via electric vehicles.
While the docking stations provide information on where to find or return bikes, a cell phone app for Android phones also provides that information for commuters on the go. City Hire Widget uses arrows to show the three closest docking stations to the user's location and tells whether or not bikes or docks are available.
Photo above of bikes on Godliman Street from Paul Robertson's photostream at flickr.com
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