Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme a financial "black hole" for TfL, says London website

How many miles of cycle lanes could you get for £200m?

I hate to say it, but the "30 mins free" part of the charging is what kills it as a revenue generator. It encourages you to only use the bike for trips < 30 mins - and frankly on longer runs, after 30 mins on a Boris you need a breather so you dock it, grab a drink, and then take another which is completely free. I've done the City to Vauxhall in 30 mins anyway - until the network reaches further out most people won't need to ride further.

On the flipside it's no faster than walking until the network is denser: at lunchtime I walked from near Old Street to Farringdon. Took 20 mins. To take a bike I'd have needed to walk to Old Street (5 mins), pick up a bike, drop off at the nearest station and walk to my destination (5 mins). So... I walked.

There's a challenge: ride from Manchester to Ealing Broadway in a day on a Boris bike. Better than joining the LEJOG queue.

One way that the system would work a lot better is if the tariff and operating system were better arranged for the uses required.

The original report recognised that the bike share model would NOT work for rail stations, as the demand is tidal, and that would incur substantial costs in redistribution and balancing bikes. If the BCH scheme had a day-hire tariff, and high volume day-hire delivery the need for 126 docking points at Waterloo could be reduced to a more sensible level, and BCH bike made available on York Way, Eversholt Street (or Euston Bus Station) Victoria Bus Station etc swiftly and flexibly. Big downfall for BCH is that they have fixed docking points and even a non-tidal operating model needs 50% more docking points than bikes, to keep spaces available. Once the system gets a tidal imbalance (like Waterloo-Blackfriars Bridge-City of London) costs go up and levels of service (availability of spaces & bikes) goes down. TfL insisted on modifying the Bixi system, which is modular and portable with wireless (solar powered) operation, so that the installations have cost more and are less flexible for being altered or swapping over a full module for an empty one. The queues at Waterloo in the evenings would also be processed faster, if a hand-held docking unit could cancel the hire and pass the bikes directly on to the vans eliminating the triple handling of docking the bike, undocking it and loading the van, with up to 3 vans and associated staff at Waterloo. The system in Paris was set-up with a staff-bike ratio of 1:50 Barcelona was working 1:100 and BCH's initial 1:200 was alarmingly over optimistic IMO.

The Dutch OV-Fiets model - due for roll-out at 58 stations across the UK in 2013 does work, going from 2 to 200+ locations in 6 years, but only offered through a staffed location.

A similar picture appears for the 4th generation system operated by Nextbike, and Call-a-Bike, and others, which requires no fixed docking points, and thus dramatically reduces the costs for non bike elements of the system.

Nextbike started in 2006 and operates as a private commercial company in 5 countries, with some smaller locations having as few as 80 bikes. Scratchbikes (soon to launch their electronic version) (Go Northeast Key Card users get free membership of Scratchbikes) and the Nottingham Citybike (over 30,000 potential subscribers with Citycard and Kangaroo (hop on geddit) bus passes) are at present the basic form of the electronic system, which can also work on a small scale, but benefits from moving up to the higher level as numbers mount.

Finally there is the premium product offered by Brompton Dock, not competing with the grab and go of a bike sharing scheme, it offers 2 tariffs for those who make infrequent use of the bikes, and those who hire long-term - these are effectively the cycling equivalent of a leased car, ready for immediate use and simply swapped for any repairs or maintenance. Brompton Docks installed to date have seen sufficient initial growth to get utilisation of the bikes (and revenue) up to levels that make a promising impact on the operating costs, and as this grows - potentially to a point where demand places a step cost of a second unit, or staff costs for refilling/removing bikes from a unit, and the operating model changes slightly.

Docks in good locations such as Manchester and Ealing Broadway, have rapidly reached the level where over 50% of the bikes are out on hire, at any one time, and a healthy ratio of registered members to bikes is already established.

Although the thought of a stripped train carriage seems attractive, I'd guess that the logistics of manouvering bikes on and off in a crowded carriage would be tricky at best. Loose bikes have a capacity for entanglement beyond the dreams of bungee cords, and operators would soon lose patience with holding trains up waiting for them.

Yes I think the future is that public transport should embrace all things bike! Why can I not just turn up and take my bike on the train or bus? Some trains have space for only two or you have to pre book, and very few buses have racks on the back. This would work UK wide, both in the city and in rural areas not just in London.

I've used them a few times but I go to/from the station at peak times and have found the time I spend queuing waiting for a free dock, or cycling out of my way to one with spaces, negates any speed benefits over walking.

Personally, I think one of the best ways to get people on bikes in London would be to strip out the seats from one carriage of commuter trains and allow passengers to stand in their with their bikes. I can't imagine I'm the only one who'd rather walk than look like a clown on a folding bike.