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Boris Bikes go south and west on Friday the thirteenth

They're not superstitious at TfL then...

Say what you like about Transport for London (TfL) - and most of what London cyclists say about the capital’s transport overlords is less than complimentary - they’re not superstitious. TfL has announced that the next extension of the Boris bike hire scheme to the city’s south and west will open on Friday, December 13.

The next phase of the system will formally open next week with 150 new docking stations in Wandsworth, Hammersmith & Fulham, Lambeth and Kensington & Chelsea, though some stations are already operational, such as Addison Road and Evesham Street in Kensington & Chelsea, and St Martin’s Close in Camden.


Boris Bikes will be available further south and west from next Friday.

A further roll-out of new locations will continue through to next Spring with the network adding 2,000 new bikes and 5,000 docking points. Almost half will be south of the Thames.

TfL says it wall also add about 1,000 new docking points over the next few months in high-demand areas already covered by the scheme. The Boris Bike network has been criticised for peak-time scarcity of docking points in central London and bikes in outer areas.

More accurately called the Barclays Cycle Hire system, the iconic pay-as-you-go blue bikes were initially planned by previous Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, but their introduction on Boris Johnson’s watch means they’ll be forever associated with him.

The scheme opened in July 2010 and was expanded into East London in March 2012. TfL says there have been 26 million journeys between its opening and November 2013.

The extension of the scheme means that it will reach from Ravenscourt Park in the West to East India in east London and King George’s Park in the south to Camden Lock in north London. That’s a 13-mile ride, according to Google Maps, which reckons it’ll take an hour and 25 minutes. We wonder who’ll be the first to Bori-bike from one edge of the extended network to the other.

TfL has a full map of the extended network.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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8 comments

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duc888 | 10 years ago
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oh great, more twats with no road sense to be let loose to weave all over the road.

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Phytoramediant | 10 years ago
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Can we all please stop calling them "Boris Bikes". This like calling the NHS "ChurchillCare".
The bike scheme was mooted, planned, budgeted for, fought for and set up by Livingstone who unveiled the plans in 2008.
The CTC applauded the measure as 'Revolutionary'.

Johnson just came in, decided not to cancel it, made them into an advert for the most corrupt bank in Britain and handed the running of the whole thing over to the notoriously inefficient and criminally corrupt (But Tory-owned) company 'Serco'.
He's been cashing in that credit ever since.
The original concept (As copied from Paris) was a lot more egalitarian and had no connection with two companies which have regularly been found guilty of fraud and criminal dealing (One of which is regularly let off by G4S - also controlled by Tory Ministers).
I know the winners always rewrite history in their favour but that doesn't mean we have to help them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barclays_Cycle_Hire

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Watdabni | 10 years ago
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All very well but take a look at the map. You will see that there is a big hole in the network at the bottom right to the west of the Isle of Dogs (which does have the benefit of the bike hire scheme). That hole comprises the much more central areas of Bermondsey and Rotherthithe. What I would like to know is why TfL has ignored them from the start? These areas are so central they ought to have been included in the initial rollout. Instead TfL tells me that there are, even now, no plans to include these areas in the Scheme. I have twice asked why this is but TfL has, so far, declined to reply.

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zanf | 10 years ago
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Quote:

but their introduction on Boris Johnson’s watch means they’ll be forever associated with him

Only if people constantly refer to them as 'Boris bikes', which is an appropriate name as they're heavy, unwieldy and quite ugly.

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oozaveared replied to zanf | 10 years ago
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"they're heavy, unwieldy and quite ugly."

or bombproof - as you might expect a mass hire bike to be. If you don't expect your bus to be a sleek supercar or comfortable luxury limo why would you expect your TfL hire bike to be a Pinarello Dogma 2?

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farrell | 10 years ago
0 likes

Superstitious about what?

Boris clearly doesn't give a flying one about proles dying so what's the worst that can happen?

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eurotrash | 10 years ago
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That's not very "south".  39

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MrGear replied to eurotrash | 10 years ago
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eurotrash wrote:

That's not very "south".  39

No, but it does finally put Boris bikes in touch with train hubs like Clampham Junction and Putney Bridge, which means they are a lot more useful to SW Londoners like me.

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