Teething trouble for cycle hire registrations

Technical trouble hit the opening of the Barclay’s Cycle Hire scheme registration period on Friday, with some people unable to enter their credit card details to sign up.

As we reported last week, only registered users of the scheme will be able to hire bikes for the first month when it opens next Friday (30 July). Non-members will have to wait until the end of August before they can use the scheme.

But now the BBC reports that Transport for London has admitted to some technical trouble that prevented a ‘small number’ of people from registering.

The company said about 2,000 people had successfully joined the scheme by Friday afternoon.

A TfL statement said, "A small number of potential members have been experiencing difficulties with the card details section of the registration form. Software engineers will be updating the system in order to resolve the issues and enable any potential members who have been unable to sign up today to do so successfully tomorrow [Saturday].

"We apologise for any inconvenience that this causes."

Last week TfL advised people to sign up as quickly as possible if they wanted to use the bikes from next Friday, because members will have had to have received and activated a Cycle Hire key.

The company said it wasn’t opening the scheme up to all from the outset because it wanted to use the first month “to understand how people engage with and use the scheme” and to iron out any teething problems.