Month: August 2019

London’s main bikeshare system, Santander Cycles, is looking like it is finally going to grow again, after London’s Cycling Commissioner has announced a small expansion, covering the Rotherhithe and Bermondsey areas. Despite being close to the centre of London, this area has not had Santander Cycles before. The system last expanded in February last year, to Brixton. Since then, the mobility-as-a-service industry has continued to evolve, and in the absence of eScooter systems (not allowed under UK law), there are now five other bikeshare systems operating in central London, including two virtual-dock-based systems (Freebike and Beryl Bikes) and three dockless systems (Mobike, Jump and Lime), providing some competition to Santander Cycles, although it still has more bikes (and, likely, more journeys-per-day) than the rest put together.

The expansion will happen once the latest Cycleway, C4, has been fully constructed, and as this doesn’t have an exact end-date (Spring 2020 is the current plan), it also means there is no date commited to the corresponding expansion of the bikeshare. However, as TfL has said several times that there were no plans for expansion, while equivalent systems in New York and other major cities have continued to grow regularly, the change of policy is encouraging.

Rotherhithe and Bermondsey have long asked for bikeshare. Mobike has intermittently operated in the area, but there are many possible journeys that would integrate with the existing Santander Cycle docking station footprint.

Hirebike, the bikeshare system in Lincoln, has announced that pedelecs (electric bikes) are joining its existing manual system. A number of docking stations have been converted to take electric bikes as well as manual ones, and at least one electric bike is available for hire, along with the existing non-assist bikes. Lincoln is a small city surrounded by a number of villages, some with docking stations, the distances mean it makes a lot of sense to have some electric capability in the fleet. Although the area is mainly flat, central Lincoln is on a hill – indeed the street between the old and new towns (and depicted in the graphic above) is called “Steep Hill” so, for example, students getting to the cathedral area, from the university campus on the waterside, will no doubt appreciate the easier pedalling.

Lincoln’s system is quite small (around 90 bikes, including 1 electric currently, across 26 docking stations) but usage will no doubt be boosted by this innovation.

Exeter’s bikeshare, Co Bikes, relaunches on Friday, having been suspended in early June – thus missing the peak summer season.

The system was, and still is, an electric system supplied by nextbike and operated by a local cooperative (hence the co- in the name), and promises a substantially larger system of “just under 100 bikes” and 14 docking stations. Nextbike appears to be handling telephone support as their London number is listed as the number for users to call with queries.

Bike Share Map is already showing a couple of bikes available and 7 docking stations operating, ahead of Friday’s launch.

The main change from the older system which ran from October 2016 until June this year, is that it is hybrid – it has the ability to allow journeys to start and finish away from the docking stations. It will also, according to the publicly, be much larger – up to 5 times the size. The older system had a maximum of 20 bikes available, scattered across 7 docking stations which were well placed at railway stations, university campuses and key civic points but ultimately limited the possible journeys. Bikes in the older system could in fact be left out of docking stations but this was not encouraged by the operator.

The combination of expensive electric bikes which can be left anywhere in any British city always brings concerns about theft and vandalism, but hopefully Exeter will succeed where Derby, Manchester, Stockport and Newcastle have failed.

The West Midlands Bikeshare is no more, after Transport for West Midlands (TfWM), part of the West Midlands Combined Transport Authority (WMCTA), cancelled its contract with nextbike, the provider and operator, citing persistent breaches of contract – this likely relating to delays to its wider rollout of 3000-5000 bikes and proposed changes to the system such as increasing fees, not covering the full TfWM area, and struggling to find technological solutions to integrate with the region’s “Swift” multi-modal transit card. The bikeshare had been operating on a trial basis, covering just 25 non-electric bikes across 5 docking stations in a small area in central Wolverhampton in the north-west of the proposed operating area, plus a single docking station in Birmingham itself. The system had already been delayed from late last year. It had been announced in a blaze of publicity by West Midlands elected major Andy Street, at the beginning of 2018.

As recently as a week before the collapse, nextbike had announced that it had resolved issues with not finding a major sponsor of the system and a parts shortage, and that the larger rollout was imminent. The docking stations have already had their bikes removed, and the stations themselves, which are placed on the ground, will also be shortly removed. The system had seen around 7 journeys a day during the 6 months of the trial – that’s 7 in total not 7 per bike. One issue was that the docking stations were placed close together, only allowing journeys between points in the compact city centre that could be easily and probably just as quickly walked. Smarter placement, such as by the railway station, tram stops, football stadium, main public parks and suburban community hubs, would have created more journey opportunities.

Bikesharp tried out the trial system in Wolverhampton a couple of times, and was impressed by the quality and condition of the bikes (helped perhaps by their very low usage rate). The system was relatively complicated to use, however, with a cable lock that needed to be stowed and journeys that could not be finished simply by docking the bike. There were also some issues with GPS accuracy – a bike that was incorrectly docked was shown on the app’s map to be on the other side of a main road:

The two parties have both taken to the press to explain their views on the reasons for the collapse. WMCTA is saying it is looking for another provider, but the omens are not good. The West Midlands area, with Birmingham at its heart, is a large, low density urban area, bisected by motorways, with few current cycling journeys and high private car usage, compared with many other cities in the UK. This is despite its relatively flat landscape and a large network of canals, with corresponding towpaths, making for an ideal cycling network. Certainly, a bikeshare system could work in small, targetted parts of the region, if target sites are well chosen.