Category: Bike Share

Yes, we did it again. All the Docks 2 took place in London on 9 July. Five teams (up from three last time) each cycled between a fifth of the Santander Cycles docking stations in London. I again did the routes, splitting up the ~800 docking stations into 5 routes of 160 docking stations apiece. To make it more of a challenge, this time we started in central London, at the same docking station we were all to finish at, with the teams looping out from central, before returning.

Each team was to visit exactly the same number of docking stations, with routes measured at around 71.7km +/- 1km maximum, to make it a genuine equal challenge.

I was on Team West this time, with Westfield London and Hyde Park being the highlights, contrasting from the Olympic Park and Canary Wharf last time round. Team West was an all-UCL team.

(Route courtesy of West Team lead rider Dr James Todd)

What went right?

Nearly everything this time.

All teams started and finished. Four of the five teams finished within 5 minutes of each other, which I think is great after nearly 8 hours of cycling. One team finished half an hour quicker than the others, and therefore won, but then they did skip stopping for lunch. Fair play to them.

The weather was good, and Sunday traffic was light so the challenge was more pleasant.

TfL didn’t open any extra docking stations during the day, so no on-the-fly replanning was needed.

All teams used my online map to record their docks so we got a nearly complete dataset (albeit with a few errors in it) showing the teams docking.

The challenge had an official website this time, courtesy of overall coordinator Stephen Bee.

Prof Wood at City used the live API to generate some really nice live visuals of the progress, which he later turned into an animation:

The routes seemed to work OK – there were some quirks, such as the nearly 2 mile cycle North Team had across South Hackney to get to the Olympic Park. Originally, this area was Team East, but adding this in to the Team North route was essential to balance the lengths of the different routes. For Team West, we only had a couple of no-entry signs that I hadn’t anticipated and the odd road closure due to building work. Team South and Team Putney both had to cross the Thames four times.

This time I put each stage (stages are approximately 10km or 1 hour of cycling, so each team had 7 stages) through a TSP solver – I wrote some Python code to make appropriate calls to an OSRM server (routing.openstreetmap.de) and modify the results to create a GeoJSON, viewed in QGIS. Unfortunately, the pre-defined vehicle profiles available on the server meant that the cycling routes avoided trunk roads, whereas in London they are generally fine to go on, and also the router was too enthusiastic about using pavements for quite long sections, and even steps (a no-no for the 25kg Santander Cycles bikes). Next time, I would run my own OSRM server, with a a custom defined profile more suitable for London cycling. But the routes generated did suggest some optimisations and I was able to reduce the route lengths by around 1%, in places substantially rerouting sections. So, a win overall for using TSP engines.

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and the ~4:30pm finish was ideal for a couple of pints outside at the pub opposite.

What went wrong?

The biggest problem was the London 10K. This was happening almost unbeknown to us, except that I luckily realised it was happening and going to be a problem, when I read a TfL summary of events happening, the night before. The impact was quite major on the start of the event – I suspected that TfL would, unannounced, turn off a number of docking stations, but worse, the route was blocking the first stage for two of the teams – Team Putney and Team West started right down the race route. Urgent replanning the night before was needed. Team Putney did a dramatic diversion out via Waterloo and Lambeth Bridge (taking on some Team South docking stations). In compensation, Team South picked up some of Team Putney’s docking stations at the end of the day. Team West’s route would also be blocked at Regent Street. In the end, a diversion around Oxford Street, and a bit of replanning to add in a loop, didn’t lengthen the route too much. In the end, 5 docking stations were indeed turned off, they came back online in the mid-afternoon, just before the teams closed in on them, so all’s well that ends well. Probably, Team Putney could have sneaked down the race route, as the race started at 0930 and we started at 9am – and the course wasn’t completely sealed off until the runners started.

My team (Team West) suffered a couple of technical problems due to docks going offline. This meant that the bikes docked, but journeys did not “end” in the Santander Cycles system. Therefore, a new journey could not be started. These issues were solved with phone call to the helpdesk, however, the first time, the operator made us jog back to the previous docking station (as we had already cycled on with another bike/account) to confirm cycle numbers to prove we were there. Very annoying and we lost 15 minutes this way. TfL should know when their docking stations are offline. When it happened near the end, we again had to jog back, and used the remaining key for the last two hops. In the end, it didn’t deny us the win – we’d already lost that by having too leisurely a lunch. (Two accounts are necessary for the challenge, to avoid a 30 second account timeout between successive hires).

There were again some problems with the team version of my live map. The API response went quite slow during the day, even though I had tested it to work within a few milliseconds. This meant it was easy to tick, and then accidentally untick while waiting for the response to come back. Future UX tweaks would mean a confirmation needed to untick, or to tick a station later than the next one in the list.

Routes generally worked well but Team West was surprised by the sudden removal of the cycle track on the inner side of the Hammersmith Gyratory, necessitating a diversion and then some hairy lane swerves to get back on track. Sudden ending of otherwise good cycle infrastructure is a long-standing London quirk. Looking at maps, even now, I still can’t work out how cyclists are supposed to get from Talgarth Road (north side) to King Street. Maybe via Shortlands? But then why have such a great cycle path on Talgarth Road itself?

I need to automate the process of creating the routes and the files generated from the routes, particularly going from the GeoJSONs in QGIS, to the GPX route/waypoint files and the dock list. Like last time, I went through four iterations of the routes, each correction and publishing cycle took 2-3 hours.

Late changes, mainly relating to the London 10K replanning but also the need to get five route with the same number of docking stations and essentially the same length, meant I couldn’t include some “iconic” London cycling pieces in the routes – namely the Kensington Gardens Broad Walk, Parliament Square, or Battersea Bridge.

Team leads were given Go-Pros to wear, which were set to do time-lapse imagery, but these soon ran out of batteries. A different kind of device might be needed for this kind of thing.

We were expecting more on-the-day involvement from TfL (both technical and promotional) and some other data organisations as the event was part of London Data Week, indeed this set the event date. In the end, apart from Prof Wood’s excellent contribution above, we were on our own. It is possible some further outputs may appear.

Some final notes

All teams used at least one Santander Cycle between each dock, docking and undocking each time, to make the challenge official. There were no rules on what bikes the other members could be on, so one person had the great idea of doing ~55 minute rentals on the Santander Cycle electric bikes, each time. This is great because it makes the challenge more enjoyable, having an electric boost. It also will have only cost an extra ~£8 or so (as the surcharge for electric is £1 for up to an hour). The only drawback is no easy way to mount your phone on a hire bike. But i think I would be happy to trade that for an easier pedal.

Until next time…

On Monday I spent a lot of time (over 13 hours) cycling between 268 docking stations in London. It was for the All the Docks challenge, as part of Team East, with Joe (Be.EV CCO, and ex-ofo) and Jeyda (fettle CEO). There was also an all-stars Team West and Team South (including Voi, TIER, Zwings, and CoMoUK people – see this blog post for the announcement), and, across the three teams, we aimed to visit all the docking stations in London in a day.

Team East: By the numbers

• Three challengers: two on Santander Cycles (one docking at every point) and one on their own bike with navigation mount.
• Started at 08:51, after getting breakfast nearby.
• Two stops for food (at 13:30 and 20:15) plus a shorter stop to buy snacks (at 16:30).
• Three lifts (which weren’t big enough for three bikes!)
• Finished at 22:21 – 13.5 hours later
• GPS says 119km although it added a lot 0f noise around Canary Wharf and a few other places, so I think the actual distance was more like ~113km.
• 268 docks visited (the 266 assigned to Team East, plus the common finish docking station, plus a short bonus leg to the docking station outside the finish pub).
• This works out as visiting a docking station, on average, almost exactly every 3 minutes, for 13.5 hours.

What went wrong

• It did take a bit longer than predicted. The target time had been 12 hours (11.5 hours + 30 minutes in breaks) and our average moving speed of 11.9kph was quite close to the 12.5kph in a prediction algorithm I put together. The two hour difference was due to food stops and comfort breaks (75 minutes in total), along with that 0.6kph speed difference (30 minutes extra) and the three legs we I had to jog (15 minutes). Our dock/undock speed got pretty good after Joe (who did 80% of the docks/undocks) got into a rhythm.
• My personal bike (which I had planned to ride as a support to the team leader on the bikeshare bike, to do the navigation) had a flat tyre right at the start, which meant I had to hop on a Santander Cycles bike for the entire route. I had a big freak-out when I discovered this (no bike shops in Westfield Stratford City, challenge starting in half an hour) but it was OK in the end – I bought a £20 monthly membership in the app, on the spot, and the ride was more comfortable than I expected, but it did mean I needed to keep fishing my phone in and out of pockets at every docking station.
• I also twice forgot to dock at least once an hour, twice, so got two £1.65 overage charges).
• A result of my phone (with map) not being mounted on my bike, was I was constantly pocket-tapping the team version of the map as I kept grabbing my phone. This mean I kept ticking off other teams’ docking stations by mistake, particularly Team West’s list. The team version needed a UX tweak so the checkboxes’ labels were not tickable, or have separate tick-pages for each team.
• The only significant routing error was at Import Dock in Canary Wharf (no regular Google Street View allowed there, so I couldn’t see in advance) where we ended up at road level, but the docking station was below us, at water level. Taking the bikes down an escalator in the new Crossrail/Elizabeth line station, got us to where we wanted to be.
• Proper food stops need to be built in to the schedule, rather than hoping we accrue time and then spend it when we need it. We got hungry in places were there weren’t any quick eateries.
• Three legs had to be jogged by some rather than cycled by all, due to infrastructure problems, although we still docked or undocked at each. At the first one, both Joe’s keys stopped operating and the dock was full so I couldn’t dock (with my third account) either. So I cycled to the next docking station, docked, ran back and undocked. A later problem dock wouldn’t release any bikes so I handed mine over and jogged to the next station to get another one. Finally, three from the end, the terminal disconnected after docking successfully, so I ran back to the previous one and went from there to the penultimate one.
• One or both of our pair of keys got temporarily blocked several times. With one blocked, using the other, single key resulted in a mandatory 30-second delay before you are allowed to start another journey. Each time, a call to Santander Cycles support fixed the blocked key quickly. Santander Cycles does have a responsive and effective telephone support operation.
• One docking station appeared to have been vandalised, with the “slot” on most docks crushed so that the bike couldn’t be docked. Eventually we managed to find one where we could squeeze it in.
• Routing people near the finish, then up a hill and away, 10 hours in to the challenge, is demotivating, and coupled with the late time, I think this is what made Team West’s decision for them. A long, clear run into the finish line without big loops away, is preferable! In general, my design for West and East was a long wiggly route up and down, towards the finish, from the outermost parts of the network. By contrast, Team South went near the finish quite early on, before a long tour out to Putney, finally coming back along the river, back into town. I think this latter overall shape of the route probably is better for keeping people going to the end.
• A few of awkward wrong-side-of-road docking stations on dual carriageways had to be visited, although generally with traffic lights, we got across OK. The worst link was a short section of The Highway followed by a right turn. This is a horrible road, and the others in Team East took the pavement instead (but were further encumbered by barriers left up from the London Marathon the day before). In retrospect, a walk-bikes route back across a new private development’s plaza would have been better.
• A few roadworks made getting to some docking stations tricky. In the end, Team East had four blocked links – resurfacing by the Orbit sculpture in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (where we just cycled through the construction site), park re-modelling in Shoreditch Park (which necessitated using park paths to get around it), Angel Street was closed for building construction (so we went through Postman’s Park instead) and finally St Bride’s Street was completely blocked for resurfacing, but the Poppin’s Court tiny alley diversion was a lot of fun.
• The low point was at around 7pm, as the sun set, calculations suggested all three teams were well behind a nominal 9pm finish, and it looked like we would have to bail to make it to the pub. There was also some concern about what it would be like doing this kind of frantic point-to-point riding at night in London traffic, with tired legs, although in the end the traffic levels died down quickly after rush-hour. We also hadn’t had dinner and a proposed food stop at Angel was still 90 minutes away. A conference call between teams was held and a final decision at 9pm would be taken.
• We approached the Somers Town Bridge at around its historic 9pm closing time (not sure if it actually does still close) so decided to take a long diversion around.
• In the end, just after 9pm, we passed by our team lead’s home (25 from the end) and, with one eye on a very early start the following day, he opted to stop there. Team West had already quit and were arriving at the pub. Team South decided to double down and keep going. Their final stage along the spectacular Embankment at night, with views across the Thames, may have helped with their decision! We carried on for a final section around King’s Cross and, in the end, quite quickly down to the finish at LSE.

What went well

• By and large my manual routes worked pretty well. For Team East, there were only a couple of banned turns and one wrong-way street encountered, easily fixable on-the-fly. The teams were pretty happy with my routes, which is good!
• Careful planning tried to minimise the number of docking stations on the other side of busy roads, even if this slightly lengthened the route.
• I was pleased I could include some of London’s best cycle infrastructure without lengthening the routes. The Olympic Park, Victoria Park, Regent’s Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Lower Thames Street and Victoria Embankment (CS3). It was nice, on the day, to unexpectedly discover some of London’s newer protected cycling infrastructure on roads I knew well from pre-protected days.
• After a while, we honed our docking/undocking technique and Joe got it down to around 15 seconds. Every 10 seconds saved per dock is 45 minutes saved on the challenge as a whole.
• Considering the amount of docking/undocking operations we did, we had very few failed locks/unlocks or disconnected terminals.
• My gadget batteries worked out OK. My old Garmin GPS wristwatch lasted 9.5 hours (albeit with no HR or Bluetooth), and then the last bit of route recording was done directly on my phone using Strava in the background. I only used GPS on my phone sparingly, to occasionally locate myself on the web page, but after 11.5 hours my phone’s battery had got down from 95% to 3% so I kept it plugged into a power bank on a cable, for the remainder, and it was fine. Jeyda’s Wahoo’s battery was absolutely fine throughout.
• We did visit all 268 docking stations, even if it took us nearly two hours longer than planned.
• We all stayed in good spirits as a team, and generally stuck together, although we did split up a bit near the end as different people drove forward to keep the pace going.
• I thought we might need an operations person at a desk, checking for changes, handling social media and directing/motivating teams, but actually it worked fine with everyone on a bike.
• We crossed the finish feeling fine – it’s the day after that I felt shattered.

Notes for a next time

• General consensus in the pub was that having four teams (N, E, S, W) doing around 200 docking stations each, would be more fun and would allow more pub time, food time etc. Team West ended their challenge after around 200 docking stations when it was clear they would struggle to get to the pub before closing time if they continued (and as they had to loop away from near finish at that point). Team South made it just after last orders so Team West bought a round for them in advance. But a decent length social after such an exhausting day is important.
• Finishing at the docking station outside the pub would have been better (I had decided against it because the distances across the three teams wouldn’t have matched as well).
• Hopping on and off the bike for each dock gets tiring. Particularly as so many of the docking stations are on pavements and facing away from the road, resulting in many kerb hops, jolts and awkward manoeuvres. Possibly alternating the docking between two leads would make this better?
• You definitely need one person to have a bike-mounted smartphone or navigation device (Jeyda’s Wahoo device worked pretty well) to do efficient navigation on a mounted stand rather than in/out of pocket.
• Having two keys (on two accounts) is essential. As well as cutting down the dock/undock time, it can deal with full docking stations.
• Santander Cycles finally launched electric bikes into their fleet, a few days after our challenge. These would be good for support riders, if too expensive for the lead rider (£1 surcharge per leg!)
• I/we would definitely invite people to accompany us for a stage or a few legs. We did have Ilma from Fettle along for the City of London legs which was motivating (and she filmed a mini-movie/montage of us)
• I’m glad we missed the morning rush-hour and the evening rush-hour while we were in the City was pretty intense too.
• Some routing tweaks would be good. See a future blog post here for some technical details on how it was routed and how it could be made better.
• Finally, I think the mapping/recording could be automated more. I liked my live-updating map, it was the result of a few evening’s simple Javascript coding, but there’s definitely more that I could do – leaderboards, current location pin, ETAs etc.

One note on helmets – normally I would always wear a helmet on my own bike, but not on bikeshare bikes – we shouldn’t be encouraging it for bikeshare bikes as it significantly reduces their utility and appeal for spontaneous journeys. However – I’m glad I did wear one, because we were on the bikes for 12+ hours, occasionally taking some quite aggressive manoeuvres to get across to the other sides of streets. We had no incidents or even any beeps from drivers, but one person in one of the other teams got bumped by a van. You do feel pretty secure on a Santander Cycle even without a helmet, as they are 25kg, feel incredibly sturdy, and you can never go that fast on them. But for this kind of challenge, hazards were definitely higher than normal and so the extra security of a helmet was welcome.

The Pashley-made bikes (bike numbers starting with 5) make up around 20-30% of the fleet and are definitely better than the older bikes still available, as they are newer. They are slightly lighter, have better lights, a more solid seat adjustment mechanism, and generally just feel nicer. We generally opted for those bikes, and typically stayed on the same bike for hours at a time.

I’ll have one more blog post about the challenge soon, some technical notes about how I put together the routes and some of the issues I faced doing so.

Links

Website map with the timings: https://misc.oomap.co.uk/atdmap/

Route GPX files and timings CSV: https://github.com/oobrien/allthedocks

Some photos courtesy of Jeyda and Joe. Background mapping © OpenStreetMap contributors.

[Update: How it went]

On Monday I will be attempting to visit every Santander Cycles docking station in east London by bike, starting at 9am outside the velodrome in the Lea Valley VeloPark (the “Pringle” from the London 2012 Olympics), cycling over 70 miles and hopefully finishing sometime that evening close to the London Transport Museum in the centre of the city.

It’s the result of an idea by Stephen Bee (of Zwings, an e-scootershare company), Joe Seal-Driver (a mobility expert who formerly ran the ofo bikeshare in London) and Matthew Clark (Chair of CoMoUK, the UK’s bikeshare industry group). They have assembled three teams of three people – the teams will leave east, west and south London at the same time on Monday, each team travelling as a group and docking one Santander Cycles bike at each docking station in the east, south of west part of the network. That’s around 263 docking stations per team – or one every 2-3 minutes, as the plan is, 12 hours later, for everyone to meet on Aldwych.

Why are we doing this? Because it is there to be done, and to see if it is possible to do – perhaps with an eye to a possible single continuous round in the future.

How? Each team will have a lead rider, who has to dock and undock a Santander Cycles bike at every intermediate station, plus two supports on their own bikes (or other hire bikes) – one to navigate and one to tick off the list and update everyone else. TfL was due to launch some pedelecs (electric bikes) into the fleet in September – this got delayed, but if they do appear quietly on Monday, it will be a welcome boost.

The Routes

I’ve created a suggested route for each team – have a look – and the markers should gradually turn green on the day as the teams progress. Some of the teams may be marking progress a different way – but look out for live updates here from at least Team East – subject to battery life and other practicalities. The “official” record of each visit will be compiled by Santander Cycles operations, using their hiring transaction logs, after the event.

Tech considerations – we were hoping to be using routing apps. However – these have proven to be a bit of a challenge. Some have restrictions on the total numbers of waypoints/routepoints, and some insist on rerouting you the long way around… we are aiming to cycle as much of the route as possible, but there are short pavement sections and one-way roads when we’ll need to wheel bikes in one direction to or from certain docking stations. The only long walking section is through Holland Park. So, a more manual approach has been taken. A website with a pre-planned route, and paper backups of the map in case of failing smartphone batteries.

Another issue with routing applications is they aren’t up-to-date with the many one-way/two-way signage from the local authorities. Some areas have introduced Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, and some borough in particular are keen on having one-way roads allow two-ways by bike. Neither OpenStreetMap nor Google Maps is fully up to date with these changes.

There is also the issue of automatic routing between 260+ locations. This is a so-called “Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP)” (the best route between multiple points) which can only be done automatically with heuristics. So, ultimately, the routing has been done manually. Local knowledge, Google Street View and OpenStreetMap have all been useful, plus I’ve visited a couple of links to check their current state. I’ve split each of the three routes into 12 section, each approximately 10km or 1 hour. I did then use an online TSP engine – RouteXL – on some of these sections to see if it could beat my “manual” route planning, and in a couple of places it did spot something clever. But I think my three routes – each around 116km long – will be pretty close to the optimum routes.

My preparation is limited – I haven’t even hired one of the bikes for many years – but my commute to work by bike is over an hour each way, which helps. I will also be a doing couple of hours cycling to help at the London Marathon on Sunday, and also (albeit not quite the same type of exercise) I waited 9 hours in The Queue earlier in September. Technical preparation has included buying a Santander Cycles monthly membership, a phone mount, some protein bars and a spare battery pack! Stephen and Joe have also done a test hour. Their rate then suggests it is possible but will be a considerable challenge to have completed our third by the evening. Luck will need to be on our side.

All the Docks should be responsible for 2-3% of all hires on Santander Cycles on Monday.

If all goes to plan, Team East will be heading through Canary Wharf just after noon, through the City of London just before the evening rush-hour, and King’s Cross at around 7:30pm. We haven’t quite decided how/where/when we will be stopping for food – it might have to be on-the-go snacking.

You can view the map here and download GPX files containing the routes and waypoints, from GitHub. Here’s Stephen’s introduction to the project.

On Monday, keep an eye out on Twitter – at @allthedocks and also my own account (@oobr).

& here’s what happened.

There’s a new bikeshare in London – HumanForest launched yesterday (Wednesday 24 June 2020) with 63 pedelec bicycles. They are planning on rolling out up to 200 bicycles in their Islington trial operation, before hopefully expanding to central London later this summer with up to 1000 in their fleet.

HumanForest’s technology platform and equipment provider is Wunder Mobility, based in Germany. This is the first UK system using these bicycles, so I was keen to try one out in the wild.

HumanForest’s bikes are painted dark green so are a little harder to spot than the late JUMP bikes, which were luminous red, and may or may not make a return under their new owners Lime soon, or the flureoscent yellow Freebikes. They are rather sleekly built, with the battery well integrated into the frame rather than bulging out of it:

The big selling point of the bikes is their electric capabilities and price point – these are pedelec bikes with a top speed of 15mph (you can pedal faster than that but you won’t have any electric assistance). The bikes are free for your first 20 minutes each day, then 12p/minute thereafter. This is broadly comparable with Freebike’s price offering, and much cheaper than Lime’s £1/start+15p/minute pricing. (London’s Santander Cycles did demo a pedelec version last year but have yet to announce a launch date or pricing.)

HumanForest looks extremely affordable, I presume their plan is that the average user will take their 20 minute free journey to get into town, and then HumanForest will collect £2.40 for the 20 minute equivalent return journey. They should also, if they are able to expand quickly into adjacent boroughs, take advantage of the current huge surge in leisure cycling in London. Such users will typically be much less price sensitive and also likely to use the bikes for a longer time.

The HumanForest bikes ride nicely – as you would hope for brand new. European-designed bikes – with more of a power kick than Lime and Freebike, but not quite as much as JUMP offered. As ever, it’s nice to get across junctions from a standing start quickly, and to get up hills with little effort, but for longer journeys, the only very marginal battery boost above ~10mph will be frustrating.

I had a couple of technical issues – the first bike I tried refused to unlock with a “Get closer to the vehicle” message on my phone app despite being right beside the bike. The second worked fine, but had an issue with the adjustable saddle height clamp – it was a little loose, so I kept sliding down. The seat-posts do however come with a nice indication of which setting is needed, based on your own height (in cm):

Overall though, the build quality is good, the bike feels solid to use and has some nice design elements, including the saddle, which has a nice two-tone colour and a flat top, and a handlebar twist-bell.

In a sign of the times, the baskets are all fitted with a cable lock to which is attached hand sanitizer, and the HumanForest app asks you to check you have applied it before hiring:

HumanForest asks users to take a photo of the bicycle once parked at the end of the journey, this is good practice as it will help users “self police” their parking locations. I parked beside another HumanForest bike which was parked across the pavement on an inside bend – not great:

I moved it to the side of the pavement, but this off the weediest alarm I had ever heard. After three rounds of electric buzzing, all was silent again!

As always with bikeshare in London, HumanForest will live or die based on the vandalism and wear-and-tear rates, and how the operation teams deals with these. It is a small fleet, in one London borough, but there is definitely space for a third pedelec fleet in London, so the best of luck to HumanForest and hopefully we’ll see them expand far and wide.