Recent figures released by Transport for London (TfL) have revealed that the number of journeys made using the capital’s Santander Cycles public bike hire scheme in 2023 are at their lowest level in a decade, with TfL blaming the recent “consistent bad weather” for the sudden drop in hires – though some Londoners have cited the scheme’s soaring costs as the major contributory factor behind the fall in demand.

In 2022, usage of the Santander Cycles, or ‘Boris Bikes’ scheme – first introduced in 2010 during Boris Johnson’s tenure as Mayor of London, hence its lasting epitaph – reached record levels, as 1.3 million journeys were recorded in July alone, and 7,383,232 made between January and July that year.

However, in the same period this year, just 4,976,813 hires have been recorded – a drop of 33 percent compared to 2022 and the lowest number since 4,807,338 journeys were made during the first half of 2013, when there were much fewer bikes and docking stations available.

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TfL’s head of cycle hire David Eddington has claimed that “a number of factors” are behind this substantial drop, while singling out the “consistent bad weather recently” for its “significant impact on casual hires”.

“Last year was a record year for the scheme and a number of factors have contributed to a lower number of hires this year, including the consistent bad weather recently, which has had a significant impact on casual hires,” Eddington said.

“We will continue our work to make cycling more accessible than ever by continuing to open and extend Cycleways across the capital and making further improvements to Santander Cycles, which could include increasing the number of e-bikes in the scheme.”

Despite Eddington and TfL’s focus on the recent inclement weather, other users of the scheme have noted that the steep drop in journeys has coincided with the body’s decision to increase the cost of an annual subscription from £90 to £120.

This price jump was reported to have prompted a sizeable drop-off in subscriptions last year, though this was linked by TfL to the inability of riders to “auto renew” their memberships because of the new charges, forcing them to manually reactive their subscriptions for another year.

The cost of single journeys was also changed to a £1.65 flat rate per 30 minutes of use, replacing the £2 access fee which gave users access to the bikes for the whole day, provided each separate journey lasted less than 30 minutes.

Speaking to BBC London, Daniel Berube said he stopped regularly using the scheme when “the significant pricing change came into effect last year” and that “the expense hit a tipping point and outweighed the convenience the scheme offered”.

On Twitter, another former user of the scheme, Brian Salmon, wrote: “Since the abolition of the £2 day fare, I now bring my fold-up bike every time I take the train to London. Before I would always use Boris bikes to get anywhere around London. Many people are probably doing similar.”

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Meanwhile, the growing competition in recent years from rival dockless e-bike companies such as Lime and Tier was also noted by users as a possible factor in the Santander scheme’s steep decline.

Last October, TfL introduced 500 e-bikes as part of the network for the first time, almost nine years after Johnson first announced plans to trial such a scheme in hillier parts of the capital. According to the government body, over 500,000 hires have been made on the e-bikes since their introduction to the network.

In June, TfL also said it would “be exploring the possibility of, subject to funding, adding concessionary fares” to its scheme “to support the most disadvantaged Londoners”.

TfL said: “This could include discounts for job seekers and/or council housing residents – as we have done on other modes or on other cycle hire schemes outside London and the UK. We will also explore ways to support more disabled people to access the scheme.”