If you live in London, you may well have noticed the introduction of several new cycle hire stations around the city. You may even have seen some people riding around on some fairly chunky, Barclays-branded bikes. These are all part of a new scheme, instigated at the behest of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to make cycling more accessible to Londoners.

The scheme has launched with 6,000 bicycles, although there are plans to expand the scheme to 15,000 cycles in the near future. At the moment, the bikes are not intended for long distance commuting to and from areas outside of central London, but are squarely aimed at workers and tourists in the centre of London who want to be able to zip between meetings or visitor attractions without having to take public transport. At the moment, the scheme covers the Zone 1 area of London, which spans from Kensington in the West to Tower Hill in the East, and Kings Cross in the North to Elephant and Castle in the South.

At the moment, you have to sign up for the scheme in order to be able to access the bicycles, although there are plans afoot to make it available to anyone with a credit card once there are more cycles available. Once you have signed up for the scheme, which you can do online at the Transport for London website, you can use any one of the bikes that are available. If you only need the bike for half an hour or less, you do not have to pay any hire fee at all. A days hire is a mere one pound, a weeks hire is five pounds, and a years membership is forty five pounds. Once you have registered, you will either receive a passcode or a key that can be used to unlock any one of the 6,000 bikes that are parked around the city centre. When you are finished with the bike, you can simply park it in one of the docking stations, and you will be charged for the time that you have used. At the moment, the cycle hire scheme is not compatible with the Oyster card system used on the rest of Londons public transport system, although there are plans afoot to rectify this in the near future.

For more information and advice about cycling and bikes, visit the British Bike Association website.

By: Mark R Taylor