London cycle commuting surges in face of Tube strike

he looks a bit wet-faced

A few observations from my normal train-Brompton commute

* quite a few commuters flouting the train guidelines and bringing their non-folding bikes on during peak periods, blocking the aisles resulting in snide comments from other passengers aimed at anyone carrying a cycle helmet
* a lot more people walking and jogging to work (whilst listening to their iPods) and stepping off the pavement without notice
* significantly more cyclists many of which were clearly not accustomed to riding in London and further tarnishing the reputation of cyclists
* And - Barclays cyles' rear mudguards aren't effective. Where's the wet faced smiley?

Spotted someone had put a lock through the wheel of a boris bike at lunchtime, obviously hoping to reserve it for his ride home. Checked work for a set of bolt croppers but no joy

Commute into City of London was fine this morning.
Traffic was at a standstill, which slowed me down quite a bit, but it's always nice to zoom past queues of cars. Loads of other cyclists out there too, which made it very hard to find a parking space outside my office. We're triple parking on the bike stands out there!

I'm a big fan of the Boris Bikes - I registered as soon as the scheme launched, rode one home on day one and have made countless journeys since.

That said, I didn't expect to find any bikes free this morning, so was quite shocked to see a solitary machine at my local docking station in Vauxhall.

The journey itself was very pleasant, but trying to find a free docking space in town was, unsurprisingly, a nightmare. Big queues everywhere, people not sure how to work the docking machines, not much fun. I was really lucky to find a free space near my office but this problem needs to be sorted for the scheme to be a real success.

It's not just a problem on rare strike days - pretty much every morning, it's hard to find a spare bike in zone two and near-impossible to find a free dock in zone one. The reverse situation happens in the evenings, of course.

I applaud this scheme in general and anything that puts more bikes on the capital's roads can only be a good thing, in my opinion. That said, they really need to sort out the distribution of bikes to make the system a real success.

Perhaps when they open the scheme to pay-as-you-go customers, there'll be a more 'organic' flow of bikes between docking stations throughout the day. At the moment, it's a bit of a nightmare during peak periods.