Sarah Gallacher has been getting some hands-on experience of what it’s like to be a user of London’s shared bicycle scheme “Barclays Cycle Hire” (BCH).

I was pretty nervous about cycling through the streets of London and to be honest I imagined I would stay in and around the parks for most of the day, so that’s where I headed first, for a cycle through Hyde Park.  The weather was gorgeous, the path was pretty quiet and it was great fun.  I spoke to several people at the docking stations who all happened to be tourists.  Like me, they were nervous of the roads and hadn’t ventured outside the parks.

However, my confidence had grown slightly and I felt I needed to experience cycling in London streets so I headed over to the back streets of Mayfair where I found a docking station on a quiet road.  I checked the map on the docking station terminal and picked out a route that would take me to another station a short distance away.  (I should point out that I was going for an offline experience.  I wasn’t using any apps to help me and perhaps if I had my user experience would have been different?)  Picking a route from the terminal map was difficult – the map didn’t show the one-way road system and it was hard to gauge how busy/quiet a particular route might be.   However, even though I was a little anxious my first street cycle was great!  Much more fun than cycling around the parks – if only the tourists knew!

By the afternoon my confidence had grown even more and I was taking much longer trips, from Holborn to Kings Cross and from Borough to Embankment.  It was addictive and I felt empowered knowing that I had just traveled across London by my own steam.  However, there were a few anxious moments, usually when I got lost or diverted from my planned route.  On one occasion I took a wrong turn and ended up going through Victoria Embankment tunnel (a fast two lane section of road with no turn offs or pavement)!  Not where I wanted to be on a leisure bike that wouldn’t go much faster than 10mph.  On several other occasions I had to dismount and push my bike along the pavement or over a pedestrian crossing because I’d come across a busy or complex road junction.  Some en-route guidance would have been really useful.  Yes, there are routing apps available but it’s almost impossible to consult those apps mid-cycle without pulling over (if you can).

There was also the element of time that was always in the back of my mind.  The bikes are only free to hire for the first 30 minutes of a journey.  If you don’t re-dock within 30 minutes you get hit with additional charges and indeed I spent several frantic minutes near Kings Cross Station desperately trying to find a docking station before my time ran out.

Later in the afternoon, I ran into a few of the BCH guys who redistribute the bikes around the docking stations (to ensure that none stay empty or full for too long).  I witnessed hundreds of bikes being stock piled at Stonecutter Street in Holborn ready for the evening commuter demand.  I also chatted to a guy who was removing bikes from an already pretty empty docking station at Waterloo.  Confused, I asked him why he was taking bikes away when there were so few left.  He said it was to prepare for the evening influx of commuters coming from the city centre.

All in all I had a very enjoyable day.  There were a few technical difficulties (unable to dock/undock bikes) and despite the best efforts of the BCH redistribution guys, I sometimes had trouble finding a free docking point at my destination (incidentally, I had no problems finding a free bike).  However, I loved cycling through the streets; taking in the city of London from a new perspective.