South London looks like it will be getting an expansion of the Santander Cycles dock-based bikeshare system – eventually. Southwark council has approved an extension to Bermondsey, Rotherhithe and Walworth – 18 new docking stations, but you’ll have to wait up to two years for them to be implemented. It also has plans to extend down Camberwell and Peckham – but these further 21 docking stations may not be appearing until 2023.
The slow rollout is being funded by different parties – TfL along its “red routes”, developers at major housing projects, and the borough itself – the docking stations themselves being the major expense, as they require an electricity supply and internet connection, and have to go through the full planning process with detailed design documents.
The Santander Cycles system currently has 777 docking stations with 20495 docking points, servicing around 8400 bikes, with an average straight-line closest distance between docking stations being just 213m. The Southwark expansion therefore represents around a 5% expansion of the system.
Sooner than this expansion, it is expected that the Santander Cycles system will start to introduce electric-assist bicycles (pedelecs). These were first demonstrated at the London Car Free day in September and will likely debut in “revenue” service soon – hopefully early next year. It is unclear how these will be managed – whether they will be charged at all docking stations, at certain designated docking stations, or whether the batteries will be mechanic-replaced and the bikes will continue to use docking stations like the regular bikes. Already there are two versions of the (non-electric) fleet in simultaneous use – the original PBSC “Bixi” bikes which launched in 2010, and the Pashley-designed bikes (denoted 5xxxx) which launched in 2017.
Meanwhile, central London’s five other bikeshare systems continue to evolve and adapt at pace, with Beryl launching an electric version of their fleet next year, and JUMP, Freebike and Lime already electric.
This is a draft piece of commentary and I will evolve it in response to any feedback and further analysis I am performing.
A bylaw is being drafted between the 32 London borough councils (and the City of London) to introduce a coordinated approach to managing dockless micromobility sharing, such as bikeshare and (should future national legislation permit it) escootershare, across London.
Currently, each council sets its own policy with regards to dockless cycle operators in their area, making running a pan-London system painful for operators, and resulting in a number of inconsistencies. The matter is further complicated by the parking of a bicycle on a pavement not actually being illegal currently, as long as it is not obstructive, and by “red route” roads in London – the larger roads, which are generally managed by Transport for London and not the councils – and which in some cases have good segregated cycle lanes installed by the transport authority which is more focused on getting people travelling efficiently throughout London, rather than entirely within small borough boundaries – some councils tend not to consider than someone would ever want to leave the borough, as evidenced by mandating max/minimum bike numbers on operators who then watch as their users head, like everyone else, in the direction of the City/Westminster/Canary Wharf, in the morning.
At the same time, there are currently 7 operators in central London (3 free-floating, 2 hub-based and 2 dock-based), a mix of bike types (3 electric systems and 4 manual ones) and yet, while some areas have 5 operators, a third of boroughs have none.
The bylaw will ask each council to outline its policy of where parking of dockless bicycles is allowed, the policy then applied consistently to all operators who want to be in that borough. This potentially could result in huge variations – some, like Islington, may be happy to allow parking whereever, as long as basic sensible parking considerations are taken into account. Some may designate only a small number of hubs, perhaps far away from their local commercial centres and bus/rail stations, where they are out of sight and with little impact, but not useful for the great majority of people. And some may take a balanced approach, like the City of London which has designated (and marked) a number of hubs throughout its area.
My personal view is that one size does not fit all, and in fact there are five distinct categories of publically accessible “realm” in London which all need different approaches to how dockless micromobility should be parked on them.
For outer London boroughs (Z5-6), with low population density, the designation of hubs is I think vital for a bikesharing service to ever be viable. But these should be recommended rather than mandated. There should not be any specified exclusion areas, instead, users should follow “common sense” principles.
For inner London boroughs (Z3-4) where cycling to the centre of London is viable – on a pedelec at least – it is important to allow the operators to position their bikes where they feel they can provide a service that is viable for them. Councils should publish geo-files containing exclusion areas, such as the busiest pavements in their urban centres, while still allowing the parking of free-floating bicycles close enough to them. If an inner borough is very keen on having designated hubs, then they should either exist on an optional basis (like for the outer boroughs) or at the density of the city centre (i.e. with no part of the borough more than a ~400m walk from one). Hubs must be outlined in brightly coloured paint and with a generic caption like “dockless parking”, and ideally with a metal sign to increase visibility. As below, hoops/fences are an alternative.
For the city centres (the area covered by Santander Cycles, roughly Z1-2) free-floating will not work – there just isn’t enough pavement space. A high density of hubs should be made available – these should – as a minimum – include the ends of all the existing Santander Cycles docking stations, as these have a good density throughout the city centres and almost always have space at either end for at least 3 or 4 dockless bicycles – parked at right angles to the Santander Cycles. I regularly see them being used in this way already. Other hubs should either be as rectangles taped/painted on the ground, or designated fences, cycle hoops and other structures to which the bicycles can be secured (using cable locks present in the JUMP system – other operators would need to adapt their bikes to have cable locks).
Royal parks (and other urban parks) should adopt the city centres approach of having mandated docking areas within each park (although not at city centre density) – a suitable number around the perimeter of each park, but also one at all their park car parks. If people can drive into a Royal Park car park, why shouldn’t they also be allowed to start or finish a bicycle journey there?
Canal towpaths (and the Thames path) are generally linear and cramped, and the adjacent water is always a tempting target for vandals, so bicycles should continue to be not be parked on these – although allowed to move along them. Generally, the nearest designated hub will only be a short distance away from the tow path. Similarly for railway stations and markets.
Building density
Docking station/hub density
Suburbia, Urban parks
Hubs, ~ max 500m walk.
Inner City
Dockless. Some hubs in retail/office areas.
City centres, Railway stations
Existing docks (where present) plus “infill” hubs, max ~300m walk.
Canal towpaths/ river walks/ highwalks
Not allowed.
Other thoughts:
Operators should pay a fully refundable deposit for each bike, to the body managing the bylaw, which should be refunded when the bike is withdrawn from operation. This would ensure that operators, to the best of their abilities, retrieve broken bikes and remove them from circulation. If an operation folded, then the deposit can be used by the councils to remove the bikes themselves.
Operators should not be charged by the councils (i.e. should not have to pay for permits to operate), except on a cost-incurred basis.
Operators must publish the live locations of their available bicycles (when they are not in active use or transport), regardless of whether they are in a hub or not, on a timely basis (e.g. updating every minute) as open data. A suggested specification would be GBFS.
Councils must publish the spot locations, names, geographical extents and capacities of their hubs (where designated) and their exclusion zones, as open data. A suggested specification would be GeoJSON. These should be published to a central location, e.g. the GLA Data Store, and kept up to date.
A standard way of reporting mis-parked bikes should be adopted, such as FixMyStreet.
Councils should have the right to fine operators for mis-parked bikes but only if they have been demonstrably not made an effort to retrieve a bike after it is reported to them by the council, that it is a legitimate report, and after a reasonable amount of time (at least 12 hours from the report being passed on), and on a per-issue basis. The level of the fine should be two-tier based on whether the bike is in an obstructive position or just in an excluded area.
Boroughs should fund the cost of marking hubs.
Hubs can be on both streets and pavements – if the former, they should be protected from errant car tyres by using “armadillos” or similar equipment.
If operators want to fund hubs, that’s OK, but there should not be operator-branded hubs.
Finally – London’s bikeshare operators are actually, generally, providing a good service now. We aren’t seeing the huge levels of complaints about poor parking which were seen when the larger Mobike, ofo and oBike operations were running. JUMP are reporting great usage rates, and the smaller hub-based operators (Freebike and Beryl) have tightly managed fleets. Even Mobike’s much reduced fleet seems to be operating in a less intrusive way, and although data on Lime is difficult to get, it too appears to be operating effectively, in terms of rides vs complaints.
Cycle use rates/1000 pax (green) and theft rates/1000 pax (red) in London boroughs. Yellow dots show individual cycle thefts in 2018-9. The green/red borough colour compares the theft rate with the usage rate. Populations are daytime and nighttime, averaged.
When running a fleet of dockless bikeshare bikes, one of the potentially most costly problems is theft of the bicycles. They aren’t attached to anything if they are dockless, even if they are in a marked “hub”, and, even if the bikes are typically heavier than a personal bike, they can still be easy targets for theft. There are six operators in central London currently and each of these operators has to consider whether it is worthwhile operating in a particular borough – whether the profit to be made from legimitate hires outweights the costs involved in replacing stolen bicycles.
With the news earlier this month that Beryl is suspending operations in Enfield due to vandalism after just three months of operation, and following Urbo’s similarly rapid arrival to and departure from the borough (and indeed all of the UK) last year, I’ve done a simple analysis of the risk/reward of operating in different London boroughs. This analysis is an alternative approach to a previous model that looked specifically at general vandalism rates and usage rates, because it looks at the daytime as well as nighttime populations.
I’ve used the Census 2011 Travel to Work counts, comparing the full 16-74 population with that that travels to work mainly by bicycle, looking at both the Workplace populations (i.e. daytime/evening) and the Residential populations (i.e. nighttime/weekends). A simple approximation of the populations is achieved by equally weighting both figures. This means that Croydon’s average population more than halves its nighttime population during the day, while Westminster’s triples. I also only looked at bikes being used to regularly travel to work, as these are the ones that are most likely on the streets, and therefore much more vulnerable to theft.
I also use the Police data statistics on cycle theft, for 2018-9, looking across the Metropolitan Police, City of London Police and British Transport Police force data. I only considered bicycle theft rather than vandalism, as the latter is not broken down by object type, and I believe that general bicycle theft is a good proxy for vandalism and theft of dockless bicycles – with vandalism often occurring as a result of attempted theft. Dockless bicycles are probably not numerous enough in London yet (there are maybe around 3000 available) compared with the ~200000+ private bicycles that are used to commute to work daily with many left in public parking facilities, albeit almost always chained to an immoveable object.
I was keen to not map areas of high cycle theft or use – but rather map one compared to the other. Some places see very little cycle use – the low green numbers – e.g. Harrow and Havering. But they still see some cycle theft – the red numbers – and so the average number of thefts per bicycle is therefore high. On the other hand, Westminster, the City and Islington also see high theft rates but these are more than balanced out by very high usage rates. Only in Hackney, does the very high cycle usage rate (84 bikes/1000 people) still suffer from the also very high theft rate (12 bikes/1000 people). In Hackney, you’ll therefore probably suffer a stolen bike every 7 years on average. In Redbridge though, it’s 1 every 4 years – there aren’t very many bikes in the borough at all, but the few that there are often victims of cycle theft.
This is a really rough study – it could be improved by using more recent population/cycle usage data (which is available for residential areas but not work areas), by looking at vandalism as well as cycle theft, and by more carefully modelling the 24-hour population. But it’s good indicator of why Islington, Westminster and the City of London are so popular with operators, despite a high “headline” rate of theft when looking at the raw Police numbers, and why Greenwich, Newham and Kingston have no operators at all, despite plenty of regular cyclists. It is also why boroughs that sit in the middle – Enfield, Croydon, Southwark and Hillingdon – are probably only going to succeed with dock-based approaches, and so likely require council capital funding rather than hoping that dockless operators will be able to run a successful commercial service for making bikes easily available to those that don’t own one or have one handy – which is what bikeshare is.
Beryl Bikes has closed the Enfield part of its London operation on 1 October, having launched just this summer, after suffering high vandalism levels. This leaves the borough with a number of paint-marked hubs but no bikeshare service to occupy them. in London, Beryl continues to operate in the City of London and is due to expand to neighbouring Hackney (along with JUMP). Beryl is not the first operator to try and crack Enfield – Urbo also briefly operated there, before pulling out of the UK altogether.
Separately, Beryl has announced they will be launching in Norwich next spring as sole operator. Ofo previously operated in Norwich, before pulling out and then closing altogether in the UK. This will be Beryl’s fourth urban system, after London, Hereford and Bournemouth/Poole.
All systems below can be seen at Bike Share Map – click on a circle to see the details of that system.
Manual
Both
Pedelec
Dock/ hub-based**
London (Sant.)* London (Beryl)* Stirling Edinburgh* Belfast Liverpool Nottingham Cardiff Swansea Hereford Bournemouth Slough M. Keynes (Sant.) Brunel (Uni.) Surrey (Uni.) Warwick (Uni.)
Glasgow Lincoln
Exeter Forth Valley
Both
London (Freebike)
Brighton
Dockless
London (Mobike) Bristol Oxford (Mobike) Oxford (Pony) Cambridge
London (Lime) London (JUMP) M. Keynes (Lime)
* Pedelecs announced but not yet launched.
** Including systems where bikes can be left out of a docking station/hub or the adjacent area, but a punitive fee (at least £5) is charged for such an activity.
Not including systems where the minimum hire time is a day or more or not point-to-point, like Brompton Hire, or very small systems (<20 bikes) like Donkey Republic, private systems, e.g. corporate or student-only schemes like Kingston Uni, or systems which are not at least third-gen (i.e. automatic kiosks) like Southport.
Forthcoming systems that have been announced include Norwich (a manual dock-based system from Beryl).
The latest UK system to go part-electric is Glasgow’s system which is run by Nextbike. The operator has published a map showing which docking stations “pedelec” electric bikes will be able to be hired from and returned to. Manual bikes will also be able to use these docking stations as well as the non-electrified ones.
Glasgow normally has around 400 bikes available although at the time of writing this has dropped to just over half this number – it looks like the manual fleet is being partially replaced by the pedelecs rather than it being a system expansion or alternatively the docking stations themselves are temporarily out of use while being converted.
The Glasgow system dock-based. While journeys can finish out-of-dock, a £5-£20 fine is charged depending on membership type, with membership cancellation for repeated out-of-dock ends.
Nextbike Glasgow
Pedal Daily
Electric Daily
Pedal Annual
Membership Fee
£0
£0
£60/year
Start Fee
£0
£0
£0
Usage Fee
£1/30min, £10 max/24h
£2/20min £30 max/24h
50p/30min £5 max/24h
Usage Credit
N/A
N/A
30 min/ journey
Out-of-Hub End Fee
£10
£20
£5
Out-of-Hub Start Credit
N/A
N/A
N/A
Monthly memberships are also available (£10/month). Maximum journey 24 hours.
JUMP by Uber and Beryl Bikes have been awarded a licence to operate in the London Borough of Hackney. While Hackney is just one of 32 London boroughs, it has a well established cycling tradition, with more than 20% of residents already cycling to work in some parts, so its inclusion within the footprint of JUMP and Beryl’s London operations is significant for both firms. JUMP operates in neighbouring Islington, while Beryl operates in the City of London, also adjacent to Hackney. This means that many more inter-borough journeys become possible by bikeshare.
The council news release mentions that the operators are funding dedicated parking areas for dockless bicycles in the borough. Beryl already operate this way, with users only allowed to finish journeys at paint-marked or taped docking points, and an out-of-station fine charged to users who finish outside of these zones. JUMP however is a pure dockless system, so it will be interesting to see how they adapt to restricted parking areas – or whether Hackney will designate large parts of the borough as being a journey-end-allowed zone.
Unfortunately the news release makes the usual council implication that the borough is surrounded by an impenetrable wall and that no users would ever want to leave it (or arrive in it) by bike. It mentions that “over 500” bikes will be introduced. A council tweet mentions “500 bikes”. Having a set number (or lower/upper limit) on bikeshare bikes in a borough is nonsensical – they will inevitably get cycled out to the City or Islington (depending on permissions there). Will the operators then be obliged to come in by truck and remove or add bikes to keep the numbers in the borough at a set level?
Santander Cycles already operate in the southern part of Hackney. In practice, Lime and Mobike also operate there, although without a permit (leaving bikeshare bikes in boroughs is not currently against the law, as long as they are not obstructing pavements etc). Freebike also operate in the adjacent boroughs of City of London and Islington.
Both Beryl and JUMP by Uber are paying a permit fee to Hackney Council (it is not clear whether this is additional to, or provides for, the dockless cycle parking hubs mentioned). With the model of dockless bikeshare unproven in terms of profitability, in western cities at least, this is likely to make operating the systems even more challenging. However, if bikeshare can succeed in any one London borough, it is probably Hackney.
Mobility is a complex and important topic in geography, planning and technology. My research only touches on a small part of the field, namely automated micromobility services (aka micro-MaaS?) such as bikeshare and escootershare, so it’s always interesting to see a wider viewpoint.
As such, I was interested when an acquaintance at HERE Mobility, an autonomous part of HERE Technologies (a major location platform provider), mentioned a new report they’ve recently published, the State of Mobility 2019. While there’s a myriad of information sources on mobility, which has evolved rapidly the last few years, with increasing urbanisation and big technology players funding driverless car research, a single document is a helpful read to keep track of what’s going on.
I’ve used the report to frame some of my own observations of the mobility space, as it stands, rather than a simple review of the report. So, to see HERE Mobility’s own take, you’ll need to download the report (signup link above).
Mobility + Cities = MaaS, Right Now
The report is clear that Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is the current driver of mobility research. That is, shared assets are the way of the future. When living in a dense city of the future, only the lucky few will have space for a car, an electric bike (and easy access to a workshop to fix it). Moreover, even if you do, parking it at the other end of your journey will be increasingly tough.
As a personal example (not in the report), 22 Bishopsgate in London, a tower under construction in the City of London, will have a daytime population of 12000, but will have 4 disabled car parking spaces, no regular ones, and 1700 bicycle parking spaces. The other 80-90% will arrive by public transport. Great – but the trains and tubes of London don’t have much in the way of spare space for the extra people at this and other developments. So, MaaS will become increasingly important in such an environment. You need a bike or would prefer a private ride to a meeting? A fleet of cabs or electric bikes are at your service. The system is patchy now, with rival operators of both modes not particularly integrating well – but the options are there and will only become more important – and their integration is crucial for a useful system that serves all. This is an obvious point but also one that HERE Mobility’s business is staked on – as it aims to become an honest broker of MaaS services rather as a provider itself.
The report emphasises that while MaaS technology is going to have to get smarter – we are going to have to get better at utilising the newer ways of moving through the urban environment, too. The report points out too three technology components of MaaS – the backend crunching big data to create a smart fleet and smart usage of it, a mobile app so the user can get information on MaaS options and perform transactions, and the asset itself having technology, being aware of what it is, where it is, and what it is capable of doing – a so called Internet of Things (IoT) platform. For example, your electric bike (aka pedelec) needs to have a good idea of its remaining battery range and whether it is inside an allowed operating area.
Design Globally but Think Locally
Another key point as that the US is not Europe (and neither are Asia, I would add) – and so MaaS solutions in one of these regions is not necessarily going to ride in the other. Another personal example would be bikeshare.
In Europe, we had Asian-origin bikeshares arriving in 2017-8 (Ofo, Mobike and oBike to name but three) but European and Asian cities and city cultures are fundamentally different. European cities tend to not have the huge pavements of Asian cities or huge roads of American and Asian cities, but we do tend to have a problem with vandalism and theft at a level that is less seen certainly in much of Asia. So, a one-size-fits-all bikeshare is not going to work here.
Similarly we are currently having a wave of US-origin bikeshares and escootershares (Bird, JUMP and Lime). Again, narrow pavements may struggle with the physical equipment, although at least technologies have improved to secure assets more effectively.
HERE Mobility’s report uses the example of the fundamental difference of European and US transport networks – with US cities typically being more car-designed, with wider, straighter roads, while European cities have often had a bigger focus on public transport, such as bus lanes or subway networks. If MaaS is going to come in and act as a complement to both types of cities, then it has to be adapted accordingly. Regulatory differences in the regions are also a factor – while the US has been keen to lead on autonomous vehicle research but introducing sections of public roads in some cities an states where such vehicles can be trialled, European cities often restrict cars of all sorts from large parts of their city centres.
The report’s most interesting section disseminates a survey of over 20000 people, around 50% in each of the US and Europe. Within Europe, they split out northern Europe (UK/Scandinavia/Netherlands) from the big continental players (France/Germany/Spain).
The differences between US, northern Europe and southern Europe are noticeable. Unsurprisingly the car dominates as the “primary” transportation mode in all three regions. In Europe a significant minority use public transport, and in continental Europe in particularly, micromobility also makes an appearance, indicating that Germany, France and Spain are ahead of the game not only with respect to the US but with their more northern neighbours. The other modes in the survey: car rental, ride hail and rideshare, have very low usages throughout the surveyed regions. The survey also breaks down by age group across each region and mode type, with the only significant difference being the youngest group (18-24) using public transport a lot more than the other groups – and US 18-24 year-olds using rideshare/micromobility noticeably more:
Transport App Consolidation
As mentioned above, HERE Mobility is aiming to be a “neutral” MaaS marketplace and so the final part of the survey focuses on the current situation on many people’s mobile phones – multiple apps needed for utilising all the transportation options in a city, along with measuring the desire for such a consolidation for service discovery and payment:
The final part of the report summarises the survey looks to the future. The authors note that it’s not all about price and that a more expensive but higher quality commute, if suggested by an app, might win out. Users generally also are not going to keep multiple transportation apps on their phones although they may try them out for a limited amount of time. And finally, private car usage is very much expected to continue to decline. The report sites Whim, a Helsinki based system that integrates all MaaS modes, from multiple providers, into a single app, is resulting in some very positive outcomes after only its first year of operation.
Here in London, and again focusing on the bikeshare services here, we are seeing some limited horiztonal and vertical consolidation, but we are a long way from rival services sharing their provision data. In terms of apps showing multiple services:
Uber has its JUMP bike service, and Transport for London (TfL)’s open data public transport information, integrated into its main app.
Google has included the TfL public transport data along with TfL’s (open data) bikeshare (through an ITO data brokerage agreement) and Lime bikeshare, and Uber and a couple of other cab and rideshare servies, into its app, although not Uber’s bikeshare. Apple Maps is similar.
CityMapper has Mobike, Lime and Santander Cycles bikeshares, but not Uber’s JUMP, along with TfL data but no cabs.
TfL’s own journey planner just includes its services.
A number of smaller services (e.g. London’s Beryl Bikes) have started to publish location information in open data formats but these are generally below the radar of multi-option aggregators and so have not yet been adopted.
Transactions (i.e. payment) involve, in almost all cases, the user getting redirected from their planning app to the providers app, with the notable exception of CityMapper and TfL services – but if you are signed up for their “CityMapper Pass”
So, a long way to go in London and – indeed – the rest of the world.
Thanks to HERE Mobility for sending me a copy of the report.
Edinburgh’s Just Eat Cycles will replace all its marked hubs (currently marked by two bikes with a chain between them, painted rectangles on the ground, or virtually in the app with no mark on the ground) with physical ones, in an effort to combat increasing vandalism and theft of bikes. The organisation announced that it is replacing its marked hubs. Doing so will increase expense and reduce operational flexibility but may reduce the vandalism rates by presenting the bikes to passers-by as more obviously locked to a stand rather than “abandoned”.
Edinburgh’s physical docking stations do not have power or networking, so should be less expensive than London’s “built” stations (the bikes are very similar in Edinburgh to London and run by the same organisation). Instead, the docking stations will be semi-portable so will retain an element of flexibility, and likely avoid the expensive and time consuming planning application process, again a major expense for London’s system.
Santander Cycles pedelecs in London. Photo by @maidstoneonbike.
Serco, who run the London “Santander Cycles” and Edinburgh “Just Eat Cycles” urban bikeshare systems, showed off the electric bike varient of their Pashley-built bikes, at a Car Free Day event at Tower Bridge in London and in Edinburgh, yesterday.
The Santander Cycles twitter account revealed some details of the new pedelecs: like the regular bikes, they are assembled by Pashley in Stratford upon Avon, they have a 250W motor which provides 70N/m of torque. In London, there is already electric competition, with Jump, Lime and Freebike all providing powered alternatives, while in Edinburgh, for now, Serco’s system remains the only bikeshare option.
In London, Serco or Transport for London haven’t yet announced their plans for how or when they would offer electric bikes as part of the existing fleet. However in Edinburgh, Serco have already announced that the electric bikes will be coming.
As both the London and Edinburgh bikes shown appear identical, and Edinburgh’s docking stations don’t have power (indeed some are just marked rather than with physical anchor points), it is suspected that both systems will use operator-managed swappable batteries rather than dock-based battery charging.
London’s systems is run by Serco as an operational contract for Transport for London, while Edinburgh’s system is run under a more general specification agreement with Transport for Edinburgh where Serco have more freedom – and incentive – to innovate, such as moving docking station locations (e.g. to manage poor usage or vandalism) and changing redistribution strategies.
Just Eat Cycles pedelecs on show in Edinburgh. Photos by @2wheels2dex.
