Become a supporter
London's hire-bike network, aka Barclays Cycle Hire, is streets ahead of anything else in the UK. Cramming on a tube can become a thing of the past; once you've registered, these robust, if slightly clunky, bikes are free to use for half an hour within central London.
You'll never be first off at the lights, but you'll get there faster, and cheaper, than your subterranean counterparts. For outer-suburbanites, in particular, it takes away the hassle of forcing your bike onto an over-crammed commuter train: park your own bike at the station, pick up a Boris bike in town.
Bikes are hired from docking stations scattered around central London.
To rent a bike, you first need to buy ‘bike access’ for a day (£2), month (£10) or year (£90). You can do this at the docking station with a credit/debit card. (To save typing in your number each time, you can use a special key instead of a credit card; it costs £3.)
Once you’re signed up for the day, you can take a bike out for 30 minutes for free. Charges mount up after that: £1 for an hour, £6 for two, and so on. You can’t take a bike out for five minutes after returning the last one.
Only 30 minutes? Yes; this isn’t “bike hire” in the traditional sense, but simply a free bike for each journey you make. You don’t leave the bike outside a café while you’re chatting with friends; instead, you dock it, go to the café, and then take a new one afterwards. This maximises the number of bikes available at any time. Besides, you don’t want to have to pay for a replacement if it’s stolen while you’re hiring it…
Pressing ‘Hire a cycle’ on the docking station’s touchscreen prints out a little slip with a code on it. Find a bike, enter the code, wait for the green light, and firmly pull the bike out of the rack. (You’ll find this easier if you lift the back wheel up.)
You can return your bike to any docking station. Just push the bike back into the rack – and do it hard; a gentle nudge won’t lock the bike in place. A green light comes on to show you’ve done it properly. If it’s not fully slotted in, TfL will continue to charge you, which at £50 a day can be expensive. Docks are sometimes out of order, so if the light doesn’t come on, try another.
It’s common to find that the docks are full, especially at stations in the evening peak. Pressing ‘No docking point free’ on the touchscreen is your get-out-of-jail-free card, and gives you an extra 15 minutes to find another dock. The screen can also tell you which nearby docks have spaces.
The practical, robust bikes are based on a similar scheme from Canada (‘Bixi’). What they may lack in speed, they make up for in stability, making them particularly practical in crammed central London streets. They have full mudguards, a half-basket to carry your bags, a kickstand, a bell, and dynamo lights which come on automatically.
Before undocking a bike, give the back wheel a spin to check it’s moving freely. If the brakes rub, move onto the next.
Then before pedalling off, adjust the saddle to your preferred height – it’s pretty easy to do, but beware that saddles can and do sink as you cycle along. Tightening the little nut should fix this.
Each bike has three gears, operated by twisting the right handlebar. They’re hub gears, so stop pedalling while you change. If you’re finding it hard going, check you’re in the lowest gear. If the bike’s still faulty, you can swap for another (in the opening minutes of your journey only) by docking it and pressing the ‘fault’ button.
There’s no timer on the bikes, so keep an eye on your watch in case you break the 30-minute limit.
The scheme mostly covers central London, as far north as Camden and south into Vauxhall. In the west, there are docking stations in Kensington and Shepherd’s Bush; in the east, Bow and the Isle of Dogs are the limit.
Do check before going further afield that there are docks in the area. We show docking stations on cycle.travel’s maps, and each terminal has a map, too. If you have a smartphone, there are several Boris Bike apps available which include maps and show you live availability.
The scheme is expanding into Wandsworth and Hammersmith & Fulham in winter 2013/spring 2014. Electric hire bikes are to be trialled in Muswell Hill, too.
By far the most complicated thing about Boris Bikes is the payment system. Once you’ve sussed that, everything else is easy.
You want a key. They only cost £3 and save a lot of hassle at the docking station. Register online to get one – you’ll need your credit/debit card details.
After that, your card will be automatically charged on each day you hire a bike. If you use the bikes often, then switch to the annual fee of £90 – it saves you money even if you only use them four days a month.
You can have up to four keys per account. This is handy for sharing among the family, but bear in mind that each key is charged separately: use two keys on one day, and you’ll be charged two access fees. (You can choose annual, monthly or daily charging for each key, so you could have your own annual key for the regular commute, and a spare daily key for when your partner joins you at weekends.)
570,000 journeys every day – that’s how popular cycling is in London. Almost half the traffic on London Bridge is two-wheeled. Bike shops and cycle cafés are everywhere. Boris bikes throng the streets.
It’s no cycling nirvana, of course, but a big, messy city. On the one hand you have traffic-free towpaths and Royal Parks; on the other, lethal gyratories and four-lane arterials. Just as if you were a cabbie, it's all about the 'knowledge'.
But once you've acquired that knowledge, those days of crowded tubes and erratic buses will seem like a distant memory. Cycling really is the only way to get across London.
We’re building this as a guide to cycling in London. You can already browse the menu for pages about surviving busy roads, Boris bikes, bike culture and more.
But above all, these are your pages, where you can share your London cycling expertise. Use your travelogue pages to post your tips and thoughts on city cycling, and we’ll incorporate the best into this guide.
And if you want to chat and discuss issues with other London cyclists, check out our new London cycling forum.
Panniers are ideal for touring, less so for quick trips around town. Backpacks leave you sweaty. Saddlebags are too small. There must be an easier way…
That was the thought process behind the ‘Transport’ commuter bike, a concept by three students from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Just as a car has a boot, this bike has built-in storage – except here, it’s in the front wheel.
The concept, sponsored by component manufacturer SRAM, is effectively a hubless, hollow front wheel. The storage area itself doesn’t spin, only the wheel around it. You just drop your existing bag into the ‘boot’ and cycle off.
It’s only a prototype so far, and given that it’s made of wood, it’s not a very rideable one either. Still, the student designers hope that it will inspire development of urban bikes.
A new bridge is to be built across the River Thames in Reading for cyclists and pedestrians – but the Reading Cycle Campaign isn’t happy.
The bridge will cross the river north of the railway station, between the two congested road bridges (Reading Bridge and Caversham Bridge) just east of Fry’s Island. It is intended to give a through-route between the suburb of Caversham and Reading town centre, via a new subway under the redeveloped Reading station.
Reading councillors approved the plans on Wednesday. The bridge will be funded by a £20.7m award from the Government’s Local Sustainable Transport Fund, which has paid for several cycle schemes across the country.
However, Reading Cycle Campaign believes the bridge is a missed opportunity. The crossing will be unsegregated shared use, where pedestrians and cyclists mingle. The Campaign believes that there should be separate lanes for cyclists and walkers.
“Essentially the council will be expecting cyclists to ride on the pavement,” it wrote in a statement of objection. “Almost all the riverside paths are already like this, and are for this reason unpleasant to cycle on. There is frequent conflict between users. If we end up with a poorly designed bridge we will have to suffer the consequences for many years to come.”
Separately, Reading Borough Council has launched a consultation on its new cycling strategy. It aims to double the number of people cycling to work by 2019. Comments are requested by 10th January 2014.
Just in time for the winter, renowned rainwear manufacturer Showers Pass – headquarted in the cold, rainy Pacific Northwest – is setting up a UK outpost.
Showers Pass has made a name for itself from a base in Portland (Oregon), known as the bicycle capital of the US. But the company was in fact founded by an Englishman, Kyle Ranson; and it’s his brother, Fraser, who will be heading up the UK branch.
“We’ve been building a strong, loyal and fast growing following of online customers in Europe for a number of years now,” said Kyle Ranson. “But it’s time to really put the rubber to the road in the UK and bring our jackets, pants, gloves and other accessories to cyclists and active outdoor enthusiasts who don't like to let the weather stop them.”
At cycle.travel we swear by a set of Showers Pass waterproofs we bought on a recent visit to Portland, so it’s great to see them coming to the UK. And where have they chosen for a base to match Portland’s wet, windy weather? Why, Newcastle, of course.
Made in the Cotswolds. Published by Éditions Système D Ltd.
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