Month: March 2012

Categories
Olympic Park Orienteering Orienteering Events Log

Five Level Orienteering – Stratford City Race

If you thought the Barbican’s three levels were tricky to orienteer through, then you haven’t seen anything yet – there will a race taking place in and around the Westfield Stratford City retail complex in east London, on Sunday 15 April. The race will be over five levels of the indoor shopping centre area, plus the surrounding outside area.

The race is being organised by Josh Jenner, his website has full details and entries are open. I’m doing the map, which will be a 1:4000 A4 full-colour ISSOM map on waterproof paper. As you would expect, there are a number of special measures need for the event. The event is pre-entry only and it will be a mass start 45 minute score, with five “waves” starting between 9am and 10am – the early finish is needed to ensure that orienteers will have the space to run in, before the crowds arrive for the midday opening of the larger stores. Stratford City gets amazingly busy inside on a Sunday afternoon!

This will be the closest you will be able to get to the Olympic Park on an orienteering race for a few years to come – the park surrounds the triangular site on two sides, with the Athletes Villages to the north and the Olympic Stadium and the Aquatic Centre to the west. It’s the first orienteering race to take place here (the development has only been open for a few months) but it may well also be the last ever race here – with Sunday trading laws due to be relaxed for the Olympics and possibly becoming permanent after them, there may never be another opportunity to run around Westfield Stratford City free of crowds!

Categories
Olympic Park

Games Maker

Yay! I finally heard today that I have been accepted as a volunteer for the Olympic Games in London this summer. It won’t be a particularly glamorous role – I’m not going to be the guy that hands Usain Bolt his towel on the finish line – but I should be within the Olympic Park at least some of the time during my 10 days of volunteering.

Following my interview I had heard nothing, while various other members of SLOW (my orienteering club) had been accepted into various roles and had subsequently gone through the induction training programme, so I assumed the worst. Nice that it came through in the end.

I’ve managed to spend a little bit of time in the Olympic Park already – attending test events at the Copper Box (formerly the Handball Arena) and at the Velodrome. Plus I am also working on a very interesting project in and around the Stratford City retail complex that is surrounded on two sides by the Olympic Park – more on that soon.

Categories
London

A Gate as a Map

Part Two in an extremely rare series of ornate metal maps on features, is this map, which is on the gate to a student block in Tottenham Hale. The map is only in the correct orientation (i.e. eastwards to the right) when viewed from inside, so I’ve flipped the photo around so that it makes sense.

The gate/map shows the Walthamstow Reservoirs, as well as the surprisingly large amount of green space surrounding the area (which is part of the Lea Valley). The block itself is coloured in black. The dotted pattern appears to have no significance other than to add structure to the built-up areas where the road network doesn’t help.

Categories
Bike Share

So How Big Was the Big London Bike Share Expansion?

As planned, Tower Hamlets (east London) and Shepherd’s Bush (west London) saw a big expansion of bike share docking stations, overnight last Wednesday night. There’s also been some incremental additions to the existing zone, and a build-out of Camden Town in the days leading to the “big bang” expansion.

So where are the new docks? As Diamond Geezer has noted, the all four compass points have received new bike share docking stations recently.

The map below shows (in colour) the new docking stations – those that were installed since 1 January 2012, and are currently operational. The old ones are in grey.

The numbers:

Area New Docking Stations
East 91
West 9
North 5
South 6
Central 27
TOTAL 138
Docking Stations Stands
Old (2011-) 410 3937
New (2012+) 138 10071
TOTAL 548 14008

There are a few more “ghost” docking stations that appear on the map, these are old docking stations that have been decommissioned or more new ones that were recently in testing and so appeared on the official map – TfL have promised an additional 10-15 docking stations) will go in in early April.

Background map CC-By-SA OpenStreetMap contributors.

Categories
Bike Share London

London Bikeshare Expanding East and West

The Barclays Cycle Hire bikesharing system (map) in London is due for a major expansion on 8 March. Overnight on the 7th, operators will be working flat out to add 2300 1700 1900 new bikes into 4800 3000 3400 new stands, clustered in the 200 150 new docking stations that have been tested over the last few weeks, across the East End of London (Tower Hamlets, Shoreditch/Hackney Road and Canary Wharf). Also going live the same day will be a much smaller expansion west to the area round the Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush in West London. Another small expansion around Camden Town has just been completed, adding several new stands to the northern tip of the system, including handily around Camden Town tube station and Camden Road train station, allowing commuters from the north and the Overground network (like me!) to avoid the expensive Zone 1 fares and Boris Bike the last few kilometres to work.

The expansion will move London up the league table of bike share cities from 7th to 5th – in a top 20 dominated by China. It will remain the second largest system outside of China, after Paris, although New York’s planned system will be even larger:

The Biggest Bike Sharing Cities (March 2012)

City Country Bikes
Mar 2012		 Bikes
Nov 2011
(If Different)
1 Wuhan China 70000 Now believed closed
Bejing (planned) China 50000
2 Hangzhou China 60600 24000
3 Paris France 18000
New York (planned) United States 10000
4 Taizhou China 10000
5 London (8 March+) Great Britain 7200 5000
6 Yantai China 6000
7 Shanghai China 5700
Chicago (planned) United States 5000
8 Guangzhou China 5000
9 Barcelona Spain 4700 4400
10 Kaohsiung China 4500
11 Montreal Canada 4220*
12 Foshan China 4000
13 Lyon France 3400 3060
14 Zhangjiagang China 3200
15 Munich Germany 3000
16 Wuham/Qinshan China 3000
17 Toulouse France 2500
18 Brussels Belgium 2180 2060
19 Seville Spain 1950
20 Changshu China 1700 1440

* Currently closed for winter.

Data sources: Scheme operator websites (through my live map), http://publicbike.net/, http://citybik.es/, http://bike-sharing.blogspot.com/, press releases/newspaper articles on new schemes, Wikipedia articles. If you are aware of any mistakes, please let me know and I will correct. Photo: CC-By-NC IanVisits.