Skip to main content

[Bankname] Cycle Hire Scheme 2

Well, I would have been too good, if things had gone smoothly after all the problems I have had so far.

On Friday, I cycled back from work and when I got to my local station (off the Elephant and Castle), there was no space to leave my bike. I had to cycle to another one. I had been told that there was a way to get an extra 15min free in case this happens but I haven't been able to find a mention of it and of how it works exactly.

It seems in any case that there is a problem with this station (I have reported it) since it remained full all week-end and people were not able to take bikes from it. I couldn't either when I tried this morning.

In any case I have heard and experienced what will no doubt become THE major problem of the scheme when the non-members can start using it at the end of the month: the repartition of the bikes during the day, with some station being either packed and not allowing people leave their bikes or other station being without available bikes (note that this could happen to the same stations depending on the time of day).

This morning I received an email from TfL, thanking me again for being a "pioneer member", as the call us and stating that "We are using these first weeks of operation to learn more about how Londoners engage with the scheme, including patterns of use and how we can best support customers."

Hopefully this means that they will have some system in place to shift bikes around during the day to keep some sort of balance. I did spot a car with a trailer with a capacity of a dozen bikes, the other day, so this may be it.

No mention of the other problems everyone has been experiencing in that email, incidentally...

Problems, such as that of the ghost docking stations. With our membership key we were sent a lovely map showing the location of all the 400 docking stations available. The problem is that only 315 have apparently been installed due to some councils refusing planning permissions, it seems. My experience seems to point at the Tory-held Westminster Council as a main culprit for blocking the Tory Mayor of London's project.

On a (slightly) brighter note, I finally got my call back on Sunday afternoon (way of the mark from the 24hrs that had been mentioned, though); and there the birghtness stops because the person who rang couldn't do anything about my problem (the count-down to the end of my access period starting 2 days too early, if you remember) and someone will have to call me back. Within 24hrs, of course...

Still loving the cycling though...

View my growing number of posts about the scheme here.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Please leave your comment here. Note that comments are moderated and only those in French or in English will be published. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog and to leave a thought.

Popular posts from this blog

A Short History of the Elephant and Castle and Its Name

Last night I attended a lecture by local historian Stephen Humphrey who discussed the general history of the Elephant & Castle, focussing more particularly on what he called its heyday (between 1850 and 1940). This is part of a week-long art project ( The Elephant Project ) hosted in an empty unit on the first floor of the infamous shopping centre, aiming to chart some of the changes currently happening to the area. When an historian starts talking about the Elephant and Castle, there is one subject he can not possibly avoid, even if he wanted to. Indeed my unsuspecting announcement on Facebook that I was attending such talk prompted a few people to ask the dreaded question: Where does the name of the area come from, for realz? Panoramic view of the Elephant and Castle around 1960/61. Those of us less badly informed than the rest have long discarded the theory that the name comes from the linguistic deformation of "Infanta de Castille", a name which would have become at
19 comments
Read more

Rev. Peter Mullen's Blog

Rev. Peter Mullen is the chaplain to the London Stock Exchange and the rector of St Michael's Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City. Rev. Peter Mullen was also until recently a blogger. Sadly the result of his cyber labour seem to have been deleted but Google has thankfully cached some of it and I have saved a copy for posterity, just in case. The deletion of Rev. Mullen's writings might just have something to do with the fact that last week, the Evening Standard and then the Daily Mail published an article (the same article actually) about some of those very writings (even though the elements of said writings being quoted had been published in June this year, at the time of the blessing ceremony which took place between two members of the Church of England in St Bartholomew the Great - picture ). In the article, we learned what the Rev. thinks about gay people and what should be done to them: We ["Religious believers"] disapprove of homosexuality
8 comments
Read more

Liam Messam and Tamati Ellison Swap Jerseys

I am having a bit of a vacuous evening looking at images of pretty rugby players. Addidas, with its latest viral campaign, Jersey Swap , seems to be squarely aiming at the gay market with a selection of five antipodean rugby players, visitor to the website can select and see take their tops off and... well... swap jersey (those interested can create posters too). My favorites of the bunch are Liam Messam and Tamati Ellison . The pictures of their pretty faces and bulging naked torsos (excuse me while I sit down for a second!) included to this post should tell you why. A job well done for Addidas. This will go round the Internet for a while, I think.
2 comments
Read more