Boris Bikes go east
This map has been in the public domain for a little while, but I thought it was worth posting here – locations of new Barclays Cycle Hire docking stations in East London.
Tower Hamlets is getting most of the love but there’s going to be plenty on the borough boundary around Bethnal Green and Cambridge Heath. In Hackney itself there will be more around Shoreditch and Hoxton plus one at the Cat & Mutton Bridge at the bottom of Broadway Market and a couple outside Haggerston Park / Hackney City Farm.
I’m not sure how quickly TfL move on installing these things – but the planning documents for the first few are beginning to appear on the Hackney website: search for “cycle hire” in the application keywords. The Design and Access Statements are largely the same for each application until you get to the site-specific bits near the end. It’s interesting that the ‘pre-application advice’ bit at the end says that they were speaking to the council about some of the docking stations as long ago as January 2009.
While it would be great if they could head a bit further north (I wonder who I could convince to put one at the Gore Road entrance to Vicky Park?) I’m pretty happy about the expansion. The bikes may be built like tanks and availability can be sketchy sometimes but they are fantastic for those journeys where it would take forever to go by bus and slightly inconveniently too far to walk it.”
euan
Agreed, it looks like a very linear distribution. Surely it would make sense to provide them everywhere within x mins cycle ride of y.
Martin
Following up on this – they’ve done the groundwork for a docking station outside the BP garage opposite the Museum of Childhood, so hopefully the bikes won’t be far behind.
Martin
According to an email from TfL, the new docking stations will be going live tomorrow. I don’t think that all the docking stations on the above map actually been installed (IanVisits suggests that some didn’t get planning permission) so you might need to keep an eye on the official map in the morning to see where you can get to.”
jamieb
Good news that they’re opening! What I can’t work out is how they’re going to deal with the supply/demand issues around the Olympics. Every bike in London is going to be simultaneously converging on East London so all of the vacant slots are going to get filled up mighty quickly. And then the vans redistributing them back west won’t be able to move in the traffic.
ewebber
More bikes is good, but it feels like we don’t really have the infrastructure to keep the cyclists safe. The warmer weather last week brought out a lot of additional cyclists and there was already noticeable issues around busy junctions where cars, scooters and bikes were jostling for positions.Next summer will mean more cars, buses and bikes, I wonder how everyone is going to coexist 😕
GavinRedknap
Infrastructure for bikes is all well and good on paper but if you’ve been on a cycle highway like the one that goes through clapham you’ll know that a thin blue line painted on the road doesn’t do that much to make you safer. What does is knowing alternative routes not populated by buses and lorries, and if you have to use a major road, know your highway code, and stick to it, and never be on the left hand side of a large vehicle at the lights. Sorry to sound all Clarkson but for a city the size of london with its insanely complex road system, there should be some form of basic training for would-be cyclists.