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Boris Bikes (courtesy TfL)Boris bike use down 20 percent
Despite a summer and autumn of better weather, usage of London’s Barclay’s Cycle Hire ‘Boris bikes’ dropped substantially in the six months to November 2013 compared to the same period of the previous year, according to official figures.
Boris bikes were used almost a million fewer times in the period July-November 2013 compared to the same months in 2012 with 5,635,054 hires in 2012 and 4,606,565 in 2013 and, an 18 percent drop. Usage was down 5 percent in June and almost held steady in July, but was down 21-31 percent for the following four months.
Mayorwatch reported in April that satisfaction with the Boris Bike scheme had fallen since the price per hire was doubled from £1 to £2 at the beginning of 2013, with annual membership also doubling from £45 to £90.
Users felt that the service was “too expensive” and complained of docking stations not working, bikes not being available, and not being fixed quickly enough.
TfL recently announced that the expansion of the network into southwest London would be accompanied by an increase in the number of docking points in the existing network, to try and address some of these issues.
A spokesperson for London Mayor Boris Johnson said: “As was widely reported in June this year, 2013 has seen a drop in usage of the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme compared to the record Olympic and Jubilee year of 2012. As expected, these trends have continued into the autumn, with the year-on-year fall peaking in September.
“We are encouraged that contrary to claims that cycling is falling in the wake of the recent tragic deaths, we have seen no evidence of this from the hire figures for November.
“The year-on-year fall in this month was less than the year-on-year fall for September.”
If spreadsheets are your thing, you can get the usage figures from the London Assembly website.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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18 comments
Thanks for the answers and the tips. With it I could find this page http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/cycling/20389.aspx (that shows that casual users' hires are about 30% of total hires). I could also find http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/corporate/travel-in-london-report... and some summaries of it on the web.
There's one more question though I'd like to ask to people who can see the stations every day - and that's something which is not in the statistics and the reports until the service is terminated, usually - that's vandalism. I mean the thefts of bikes, not the anti-ad vandalism at the stations : is it common or not to find unattended Boris Bikes at random places in London, in circumstances meaning that someone probably removed them by force from a station for a free trip and left them there ?
What sort a pricing model is that whereby the cost of a hire just increases two-fold?
So either the services was undersold (for all these years) or greed set in. Where do profits go? On bad workers in the public service?
One where they need to build the user base. It was the same on buses for a long time, all journeys cost £1 for a while and then they gradually began ramping the prices up. Well established business model. I still think it's fantastic value if you use it well. I've had 9 hires in one 24hr period in the past and it's cost me £2 total (cos no one ride was more than 30 mins). Bargain.
Makes no sense. A service is either there for all to see and make use of, or it isn't. It's one or the other evidently.
Which buses are you talking about? I've never seen anything like the prices you're describing happening with Bus tickets (London United etc).
With Boris bikes this is easy. It was a fresh sort of service started not so long ago and so it's possible to keep track of the costs. That arises the question of pricing the hire. They built up a base of 5.5 million users. So what is the justification to stop there and put the price up?
Well so much for a base of users whereby 20% flee from using the service after a price hike. At least this trend rids the sentiment of making a population hooked on a service before extorting greater demands out of it.
5,635,054 hires in 2012 and 4,606,565 in 2013 at £2 a go, and £90 annual membership, this adds up to quite a few million pounds. I wonder what the outgoings are? No one should be making a profit. This should be a nationalised non-profit venture, should even be subsidised if necessary. Given the usefulness, the anti-pollution and congestion, why isn't everything being done to encourage use and make it more user friendly? For a start, how about lighter and generally better bikes, and a lot of money and attention given to maintenance of bikes and docking stations?
The finances of the scheme seem to be very opaque. Has it ever been made public how much Barclays are contributing in return for all the advertising?
I'm not sure whether 'lighter bikes' is realistic, given how robust they need to be. And presumably if you made them _too_ good, they'd be far more likely to be nicked? (Out of interest, have any been stolen? If so, how many?)
(And I wonder if Barclay's would cough up more, if only everyone didn't insist on calling them 'Boris' bikes rather than Barclay Bikes? Seems clear who has gotten the most publicity out of the scheme!)
Barlcays are contributing "a contribution of £25 million spread over five years (18% of the scheme's initial cost)". Wikipedia. Much has been made about how little this amount is for five years sponsorship across the city.
Emanuel, the bikes are used by all sorts really but you can tell who the tourists as they're usually the ones who have pulled over to the side of the road with a look of "whose idea was this on their face" when they set off into London's traffic
Seriously, you do get all standards of riding on them but they are slow and heavy.
Boris Johnson does get a lot of stick. He deserves almost all of it. This scheme was not his idea, and implementation started before he became mayor. The price rise will have put some people off - it's now more expensive to get a bike than to get a bus. Why?
Of course it's going to be down, the massive increase in tourism in august 2012 due to the Olympics must have had an effect.
Plus the fact prices have gone up, and possibly folk are buying or using their own bikes?
Of course it's going to be down, the massive increase in tourism in august 2012 due to the Olympics must have had an effect.
Plus the fact prices have gone up, and possibly folk are buying or using their own bikes?
Hello, a question from France that I cannot answer by myself with Internet only (although I have found some hints).
Would you say the Boris Bikes are used rather for commuting, or would you say they are rather used by tourists, or something else ? And if it's rather "by the tourists", do they have a bad reputation ? (ie : as bikes riden by users not very proficient at using them on London's roads).
Emmanuel - the bikes get used by commuters in the morning and evening. During the day they are more likely to be used by tourists. Early evenings you see a mixture of both and it can be challenging to return a bike to a popular destination since there may be no free "slots" to park the bike.
Many of my work colleagues sold their folding bikes and now use the Boris Bikes to get from the station to work. The price increase has hit them, but not as much as the rise in the cost of train fares!!! However, the two systems don't link up, so although you can use a travel card (equivalent of carte orange) to take trains buses or the tube, you can't use them on the bike hire scheme.
Hi EmmanuelM,
There's a lot of use in commuting from suburban and main line stations to central London on week days, as well as use for short journeys across London.
On weekends there is also commuting from suburbs to the West End for shopping entertainment and restaurants, and back. There is also a lot of use from tourists, often around Hyde Park, for example, or sightseeing. I've seen them out as far as Hampstead Heath at the weekend, tourists seem to hire them for longer periods.
All these statistics can be found in TfL's published research. You may be able to find it using Google - hint, use google.co.uk to get better local search results.
The story goes that drivers keep well away from all Boris Bike users, because they imagine that they are inexperienced. Certainly it's a different experience to ride one in my work clothes with no helmet, than on my own road bike with helmet, jersey and so on.
Hope this helps!
Now im no economist but it doesnt take a genius to work out what will happen if you double the price of a service but dont do anything to improve that service.
Boris does get a lot of stick on here and other forums and I agree there are plenty of reasons for it.
However, I am ever mindful of the likely alternatives to Boris who genuinely would drive cycling into the ground so as not to alienate the ever precious motoring fraternity.
Can you imagine for example that someone like former transport minister Mike Penning (utterley useless and plainly hostile to anything not spewing fumes) was ever London mayor?
We'd practically see open season announced on anyone who had the gall to walk or cycle anywhere with motoring liberties being extended to absurd levels with resultant 'accident' rates soaring in no time, none of those of course being the motorists fault.
I feel we actually need to be mindful of the bigger picture and although my understanding of the Boris bike scheme is limited I presume there is good reason for the rise in price?
Cynically of course it could be a step to kill the scheme and start the decline back towards absolute motoring dependency.
Boris will be happy, prices doubled but only a 20% fall in use. Don't be surprised to see them increase again.
Financial black hole, costing money that would be better first spent on infrastructure improvements so that the inexperienced cyclists it chucks onto London's roads have somewhere safer to cycle
http://road.cc/content/news/72386-barclays-cycle-hire-scheme-financial-b...