Santander Cycles
Santander Cycles is a public bike rental system that went live in London on July 30, 2010 . Until March 2015, the name was Barclays Cycle Hire . 5,000 bicycles at 315 stations were available for the start of the system operated by Transport for London (TfL) in the center of the British capital. The £ 81 million expansion was initially on hold for months due to software problems. In August 2017, the system comprised more than 11,500 bicycles at over 750 stations.
Colloquially, the bicycles are also known as Boris Bikes , the name of the London Mayor Boris Johnson, who was in office to introduce the system . Johnson claims the system for himself, but it was announced by his predecessor Ken Livingstone . Boris Johnson hopes that bicycles will soon be part of London “like black taxis and red buses”.
workload
In the first three weeks after the system went into operation, 60,000 customers registered and made a total of 250,000 journeys. On September 10, 2010, the 500,000 journey mark was exceeded and over 80,000 customers had already secured a subscription. After two and a half months, well over a million trips have been made and more than 94,000 Londoners have registered. On a normal weekday, 20,000 trips are made - an average of more than three per bike. And they are used, as intended, for short distances: 93 percent of the journeys are free, which means they take less than 30 minutes.
functionality
Subscriptions and tariffs
To use the system you need a subscription. If a bike is borrowed for longer than half an hour, additional usage costs will apply depending on the duration.
Short-term subscriptions for 24 hours can be obtained at any bicycle station for £ 2 by credit card. Personal keys, however, are only available to people with a UK postal address. They cost £ 3 per key; This means that an annual subscription is available for £ 90 or a "pay-as-you-pedal" subscription that only charges for actual usage and costs the same as the short-term subscription (£ 2 for 24 hours), but more convenient handle is.
The first 30 minutes of a journey are free, and each additional half hour, including a partial hour, costs £ 2. For long journeys, it makes more sense to return the bike before the first half an hour is up and to borrow it again instead of borrowing it over a longer period of time.
Tariff examples:
| Duration | 30 min | 1 h | 1 h 30 | 2 h | 2 h 30 | 2 h 45 | 6 h | 24 hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tariff | Free | £ 2 | £ 4 | £ 6 | £ 8 | £ 10 | £ 22 | £ 46 |
A borrowed bike can be returned at any station, so it doesn't have to be brought back to the starting point. After a blocking period of 5 minutes, the same bike (or another) can be borrowed again immediately.
Cycles
The bikes offered in London are made in Canada and are based on Bixi , the public bike rental system that has been available in Montreal since 2009 . They are said to be priced at £ 350 each.
Unlike other systems such as the Paris Vélib ' , the bicycles do not have a lock, i. In other words, they cannot be connected while on the move (e.g. to go to a shop for a short time). So they can only be backed up in the stations. Five bikes were stolen in the first two months after the Barclays Cycle Hire started.
financing
The cost of building the system is estimated at £ 140 million. The financial group Barclays contributed £ 25 million in return for five years of naming rights to the system. As a new sponsor, Bank Santander UK plans to invest 43.75 million pounds over the next seven years from 2015 onwards, so the service was renamed Santander Cycles in March 2015 .
Expansion of the cycle paths
The commissioning of the system was also the starting signal for a progressive expansion of special cycle routes across London. The establishment of twelve cycle superhighways is planned by 2015 ; two of them opened in summer 2010. These specially marked routes are characterized by continuous blue marking on the ground, a width of at least 1.50 meters and modifications at road crossings. Together with the rental bicycles, they should make cycling popular in London and increase the safety of cyclists in road traffic.
See also
Web links
- Santander Cycles (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Boris Johnson's bike hire scheme gets a £ 25m bonus from Barclays. ( Memento of the original from September 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: London Evening Standard. May 28, 2010.
- ↑ Boris Bikes expansion put on hold to sort out glitches ( memento of the original from September 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: London Evening Standard. September 6, 2010.
- ↑ Find a docking station. In: tfl.co.uk . Transport for London , August 14, 2017, accessed August 21, 2017 .
- ↑ City's two-wheel transformation. In: The Guardian . February 9, 2008.
- ↑ Phone fury man kicks' Boris bike. In: The Mirror. July 31, 2010.
- ↑ Jon Land: Boris Johnson hails success of London Cycle Hire scheme. ( Memento of the original from December 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on: 24dash.com. August 25, 2010.
- ↑ Barclays Cycle Hire reaches 500,000-journey milestone. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Barclays press release, September 10, 2010.
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from October 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ All tariff information as of February 2015
- ↑ Ross Lydall: At £ 6 for two hours, Boris hire bikes are costliest in Europe. ( Memento of the original from September 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: London Evening Standard. July 23, 2010.
- ↑ Meet the honest London cyclist - only five 'Boris bikes' stolen. In: The Independant. September 27, 2010.
- ↑ https://www.tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2015/february/mayor-announces-santander-as-new-cycle-hire-sponsor
- ^ Cycle Superhighways on the Transport for London website .
