I just thought I would have my say on my recent experiences of the Boris Bikes (Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme to use to true terminology). I had "hire" hopes for the scheme, which could save me having to lug my Brampton style bike on and off the train at Kings Cross. My journey used to consist of driving to Cambridge station, unloading my bike from the car and loading onto the Kings Cross bound train. Once at Kings Cross, I would wheel the bike outside, unfold it, and load my ruck sack onto the back. I would then cycle to my destination in Westminster. In practice, the folding and unfolding of the bike is pretty annoying and the seat on the train would get taken by the time I had strapped the bike to a handle in the train. The Barclays Cycle hire scheme seemed a great alternative.

On my first day of using the scheme, the key wouldn't work. I rang them up, and after being on hold for a while eventually go through to an operator. However, they informed me that I needed to activate my key by logging into the website, but they couldn't do it over the phone. Fortunately, I had an iPhone that I could use Safari to login and activate the card (all the time the bikes were disappearing before my eyes). I managed to get the last one (lucky some other poor sucker couldn't unlock it!).

On the second day (a few days ago now), on arrival at Kings Cross, there were no bikes available at the Belgrave Street station (opposite Kings Cross), so I walked to St Chads Street, but again no bikes, so on I went to Ampton Street, but no bikes (that would release anyway), so I continued to Tavistock Place were I got a bike. I then made my way to Smith Square.

To ride, the bikes are very sturdy (albeit relatively heavy) and seem very well made. The bikes are built in Canada apparently - can't we build them in the UK (which would also reduce the Carbon footprint of transporting the bikes to the UK)? The cables are all cleverly concealed within the bike itself. The gears work in the opposite way to my previous bike, so I'm forever going down gears instead of up (of which there are three, relatively low gears, presumably to cater for "the lowest common denominator" and so people don't go too fast), and I've heard the brakes (which are very good) are the wrong way round - but I didn't notice that myself. The cycle "action" of the bike is much better than my folding bike as the range of motion in the leg is longer so feels a lot better. The seats can be easily adjusted with markings to remember the setting you have (would be good to having the markings on the right as well as the left side of the seat post). The lights are dynamo driven and built into the bike, so again, no wires. there's a basket at the front of the bike, although the straps to hold anything in place are far too tight (I have yet to have a laptop in my bag, but it's gonna be an effort to get the strap to fit with the laptop in there). I've also been waved down as apparently something fell off the bike - I couldn't find the offending item, but think it may be the black stops on the end of the handlebars have a tendancy to fall off.

Anyway, back to my commute: On my arrival at my nearest station to work (Smith Square) there were no places available, so I continued to Horseferry Road, but again no spaces, so continued to Rochester Row, but again no spaces, and finally found a space at Vincent Square, and had to walk from there back to work.

Fortunately, these delays didn't result in me going over my "free" 30-minutes usage (you pay a pound a day for "access" or less if you sign-up for longer), although I have recently found out that if you swipe your key at the station you get an additional 15-minutes to find another station and it will tell you the nearest one that has slots.

So although the extra walking meant I got plenty of exercise, it delays the journey quite a lot and means I get into a work later.

I also now have the iPhone application for the bike scheme, that integrates with Google Maps to display a map of the stations as well as the bikes available (and hence free slots). However, as I found, some of the bikes are seemingly locked in place that you can't unlock. In addition, I'm not convinced how up to date the application is (although I found closing the app and re-opening helped - and you have to specifically close it from multitasking in OS4).

In summary, I think the scheme is actually a victim of it's own success, and they've allowed far too many people to sign-up for the number of bikes available. I'm hoping that they have some "master algorithm" that will be used to calculate when and where they need to move bikes between the stations which will help the availability of bikes (last night at Kings Cross they had an attendant removing bikes from the station to free-up slots and lock them to nearby lamp posts so they are obviously aware of the issue - which I was hoping would mean they would be available this morning, but alas not).