London bike hire opens to tourists

London bike hire opens to tourists: "

'Boris bikes' have been a huge success, with more than 1.8m journeys in four months. But will there be enough to go round?

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On a warm summer morning four months ago, Boris Johnson stood in the shadow of the London Eye and unveiled the flashiest project of his mayoralty: a £140m public bike hire scheme that would, he said, provide 6,000 bicycles for rent across the capital. It was, he conceded cheerfully, a 'deeply communist' idea, and what larks that it had taken a Tory politician to make it happen. Never mind that it was Ken Livingstone's brainchild and Boris was riding away with the glory.

On Friday, the scheme will finally be open to casual users so that anyone with a credit card can rent a bike for £1 – more if they keep the bike for longer than 30 minutes on any journeys within a 24-hour period.

The expansion is a poke in the eye for sceptics who said it would never work; the fleet would end up at the bottom of the Thames and paramedics would spend the summer scraping novice riders off the capital's streets. Londoners would never go for it, tutted the naysayers: they hate looking each other in the eye; they'll never share saddles with a stranger.

And yet, against considerable odds, the scheme has proved an enormous success. What's more, it is a triumph so synonymous with the bed-headed mayor that the bicycles are widely referred to as Boris Bikes – to the chagrin of Barclays, which paid £20m to have its name associated with the scheme.

Despite major teething problems including rampant overcharging and chronic shortages of bikes and parking spaces, more than 108,000 people have signed up for a £3 membership key to use the bikes. No one has died and just 10 bikes have gone missing – and two of those have been returned, according to Transport for London (TfL). More than 1.8m journeys have been made, including about 20,000 every week day.

On Friday, the already overstretched scheme will face its biggest challenge yet when it is opened up to casual users.

Current users already complain that they frequently have to queue for bikes during rush hour, or arrive at their destination only to find that every docking station nearby is full. There are reports of fierce arguments breaking out at some of the most popular locations – around Bank, Liverpool Street and Waterloo stations.

TfL admits that there have never been 6,000 bikes on the roads, and that even now, days before the scheme expands, there are just 5,000. And of the promised 400 docking stations, 346 are in operation. This is a tiny number given the popularity of the scheme: in Paris, there are more than 17,000 bicycles and about 1,200 docking stations.

Kulveer Ranger, the mayor's transport advisor, told the Guardian the scheme was still bedding in. And he claimed that an influx of tourists and casual users would help rather than hinder matters.

'Currently, because only members can use the bikes, they tend to be commuters, going from mainline stations to their places of work, where they are often not used much during the day. Visitors to London will not be travelling so much during rush hour but they will be riding between museums, shops and sights in the centre, redistributing bikes as they go,' he said.

At mayor's question time last month, Johnson was forced to admit that there appeared to be a huge gender imbalance among the scheme's users. TfL does not request gender information when registering members, but of the titles selected by customers registering for the scheme, some 74% chose to be Mr, 23% plumped for Mrs, Ms or Miss, and 3% did not specify a title.

Dawn Foster, a London-based cycling blogger, said she didn't believe women weren't using the bikes because they were worried about 'helmet hair' or getting sweaty. Safety was the big issue, she said.

'Most docks are placed next to roads, meaning nervous first-time cyclists have to start pedalling next to aggressive Zone 1 traffic, and there are huge stretches of central London that don't have dedicated cycle lanes,' she said.

A TfL spokeswoman said it was doing 'everything possible' to encourage women to cycle. 'We know that women's two main concerns when choosing to travel by two wheels are safety and changing facilities; that's why we are working extremely hard to make sure both of these continue to improve,' she said.

The safety initiatives include cycle training, new mirrors on the roads to improve visibility and awareness campaigns targeted at lorry drivers, said the spokeswoman.

The hire scheme will expand further east in time for the 2012 Olympics, said TfL, making bikes available throughout the borough of Tower Hamlets as well as north Shoreditch in Hackney.

When completed, the expanded scheme will cover 40 miles (65km) of the capital and about 8,000 hire bikes will be available from 14,400 docking points at hundreds of locations across central and east London.

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