How many bottoms can TfL fit on a (cycle hire) bicycle ?

The London Assembly Transport Committee has recently released a report " Pedal power: the cycle hire scheme and cycle superhighways" (November 2010)  that casts a beady eye over the operations of the 'Boris Bikes' cycle hire scheme and cycle superhighways in London.

As a cycle hire scheme for Manchester is one of the options being considered for inclusion in the next Greater Manchester Local Transport Plan there are important lessons to be learnt from the operation of cycle hire, or bike share, schemes in London and elsewhere.

The Greater Manchester LTP3 consultation document states that "we also need innovative solutions to help people to cycle as part of their daily lives, so we are looking closely at recent city centre cycle hire schemes to take the best from these and other marketing initiatives." (Page 12). 

Consideration of a cycle hire scheme was also contained in the recent report to the Greater Manchester Integrated Transport Authority (GMITA) Policy & Resources committee which recommended that members consider:  "iv) a major bicycle hire scheme, similar to that in operation in London, should be explored for Manchester City Centre and adjacent areas of Salford."  The somewhat spurious reasoning for this particular committee to support a cycle hire scheme was that it would remove the need for integrating cycle carriage into the GM transport network - particularly Metrolink trams.... but I digress.

The London Assembly report states that they "found great enthusiasm for the cycle hire scheme but there remain questions about how it is being funded. It is not clear exactly how much sponsorship Barclays has provided for a scheme which has now been running for four months" and that "over 20 per cent of respondents to our survey had started cycling as a result of the scheme and over 80 per cent thought it good value for money. One comment received, representative of the views of many, described it as “a very significant enhancement to life in London”.

Overall the report  is positive and supports the continued development of the cycle hire scheme, but the report also highlights that: 

"TfL reports that the annual operating cost of the scheme will be £18 million which it expects to be met from charges and sponsorship. To date in 2010/11, TfL has received only £1.9 million of income from charges largely because the roll out to casual users was delayed by six months and has missed the summer months. TfL now expects the scheme to be self-financing in two to three years and for the income to start contributing to its £79 million set up costs by 2017/18." (Page 7) with regard to the issue of funding, the report concludes that:

"The costs and funding arrangements for the cycle hire scheme remain opaque. TfL has not told the Committee how much Barclays has paid to date for its branding of the scheme. The argument that all details of the relationships between TfL and Serco and Barclays are confidential is not a compelling one. The details of these deals determine how much of the costs of the scheme have to be met from farepayers at a time of huge pressure on TfL’s finances. It is in the public interest for these details to be made available to the Committee. This would be in line with the Mayor’s commitment to transparency about public expenditure."

To date, the London scheme has attracted over 100,000 registered members, who are making 15,000 cycle trips per day (averaged over the whole week), although the average number of weekday trips is higher at 21,000-24,000. But, this is just over half the target of 40,000 daily trips, although it should be noted that the scheme was only opened up to to casual users on 3rd December, albeit with some initial problems. TfL expects to reach an average of 27,000 trips per day by March 2011 and to reach the target of 40,000 trips per day in future (unspecified) years.

Phase 1 of the London Scheme was supposed to have enabled members and casual users to 

use 6,000 bikes at 400 docking stations with over 10,000 docking points. However, the full scheme may not be in place until March 2011 and the London Assembly report indicates that 348 docking stations have been established. (Information from TfL provided on 24 November 2010).

How many docking stations are needed will continue to a subject for discussion, with the London Cycling Campaign arguing that the functionality of the scheme depends on the full complement of 400 docking stations being completed. 

Recently released bike share data highlighted how people in Lyon, France's second-largest Metropolitan area,  make 16,000 trips every day using the Vélo’v scheme. The Velo 'v has 4000 bikes available at nearly 350 stations around the city which has 480,660 inhabitants although the population of its metropolitan area is estimated to be 1,757,180. Despite being many times smaller than London, this scheme has nearly as many docking stations, as are planned for London and two-thirds of the bicycles.

Since it began in 2005, the Velo 'v scheme has tracked the start and destination locations as well as trip time.  Researchers at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon crunched the data from the 11.6 million bike trips and found that:

• Lyon, the third largest city in France, is traversed via a cluster of narrow, one-way streets which adds to the driving distance for just about any destination. Lyon bike share data shows, however, that bike trip distance is often shorter than what an equivalent car trip might be. Reasons for this might be shortcuts and a great number of wrong way cyclists riding on the sidewalks. There are no bike lanes in Lyon.

• Average cycling speed is about 10 km/hr — about 6 MPH. 

• The fastest cycling speeds are during the morning commute, when the average rises to almost 15 km/hr (9 MPH). In Lyon, this sedate speed is faster than the average driving speed in that congested city.

The Lyon data has also been used to create maps showing the most heavily cycled routes.(See above).

The London Assembly report also raised concerns about how effective the cycle hire scheme had been in encouraging people to switch from car travel. The report states that:

"Our survey found less than one per cent of journeys are replacing those previously made by car; TfL’s planning assumptions were for a five per cent shift from car to bike." (Page 8)

In response to complaints about the lack of bicycles, Serco has doubled its total number of redistribution staff and vehicles but as the report highlights, this in turn has:

 "led to questions about the environmental impact of the scheme. It was originally expected that only electric vehicles would be used for redistribution. Serco is now using 14 electrically powered vehicles, 10 Focus/Mondeo vehicles and, on a temporary basis, three 7.5 ton lorries and four Sprinter vans. It also uses 10 Nissan vans for on-street maintenance. It has told the Committee that it is undertaking a fleet review in light of the different redistribution requirements." (Page 18)

Whilst many (most?) cycling campaigns are supportive of cycle hire schemes there are concerns that such schemes will divert limited resources from other, possibly more cost-effective, projects and initiatives that promote and support cycling.  See for example the comments from one cycle organisation with regard to the proposed San Francisco Penisula Bike Share scheme:

"Dedicating $7.9 million to an unproven, risky project like bike sharing seems a poor use of limited funds, when other bicycle projects have proven track records to replace automobile trips with bicycle trips."

Hopefully, Manchester can learn lessons from other cities that have successfully introduced cycle hire schemes but until more details of any proposed scheme are made available there will remain key questions on both operational issues and potential costs.  Not least, the question of where will the funding come from and will it genuinely be "new" funding or more a case of "robbing Peter to pay Paul."  Watch this space.