Docking Hell
Exploring London on a BorisBike
I'm quite a fan of the TFL Cycle Hire scheme in London - known as 'BorisBikes' - and wondered if it would be possible to cycle around the 345 docking stations that there are in London.
So we set off one Saturday morning, to see how many we could get round in a day. Read the write up here.
Boris Bikes Video
A video we made about how to use the bike scheme.
When you sign up on the website, you choose an access period of 24 hours, 1 week, or a year.
Map of Docking Stations
I made a Google Map showing where all the docking stations are.
(345 at launch, 3 more added to take it up to 348 on 6th October 2010)
Bike features
The bikes can be a little 'stiff' when docking and undocking - you need to give them a good hard push to dock, or tug to undock!
The bikes also have a stand - use your left left/foot to kick down the stand if you ever you want to stand the bike for a moment.
Docking Stations
You can print out a 'Journey Record' at each docking staton - like a receipt, to show how long you had the back, what times, and the total billable duration.
The maps on the stations take a moment to get used to too, because they're orientated in the direction that your facing - in other words, look at the map on one side and 'North' is one way, look it on the other side and it's flipped around the other way to tally in with the way that you're facing! That's very clever, but actually gets confusing if there are two of you looking at the same time to the map on different sides trying to decide where to go because you're looking at different things!
If there isn't a docking space available to dock your bike when you get there, then you need to press the button that says ..
Boris Bikes
There is an excellent forum over at www.borisbikes.co.uk