I'm not ready with any detailed posts just yet, but have stumbled across the following today. Somebody submitted a FOI request re the Olympic expansion of the Boris Bike Scheme requesting details of the proposed new bike docks. South London people might have been hoping for additional stops to Camberwell, Peckham, Clapham, Stockwell etc. but it seems (unsurprisingly, given the Olympics), that Tower Hamlets will be the real beneficiary, with Westminster gaining substantially too. It will be interesting to observe the Boris Bike dock on Park Lane during the Olympics... I fear for hapless tourists.
The Lambeth (Kennington/Oval/Vauxhall) proposed docks and extensions were catalogued in a magisterial post over at the Princes Ward (Labour) blog in November last year. In that post, it appeared that nine docking stations were submitted for planning approval, but I wasn't clear about how quickly they'd be phased in. I'm guessing that they'll now form part of the TFL Olympic expansion because they seem to be listed on TFL's proposed Olynpic expansion list except we're four docks short of the 9 submitted, and St Thomas' Hospital appears to have made its way back on to the TFL list:
1. Kennington Cross/Sancroft St (extension) - On TFL list.
2. Vauxhall Walk - carriageway - On TFL list
3. Kennington tube - footway - On TFL list listed as Kennington Park Road
4. Lambeth Road (opposite China Walk estate) - On TFL list
5. Oval tube - On TFL list
6. Baylis Road (extension) (outside Lambeth North tube) - This is not on TFL's list. Is it being expanded as part of the original phase?
7. Kennington Lane (underpass at Vauxhall Station) - This is not on TFL's list, and again, I'm wondering what has happened to it. The scheme needs to be expanded more fully at Vauxhall Station. Am I missing something?
8. Albert Embankment - Lambeth Bridge footway - This is not on TFL's list, but I suspect that it forms part an original phase dock, and is probably one of the original "missing" Lambeth stations. I expect it will be built prior to the Olympics.
9. Cleaver Street/ Bowden Street - This is not on TFL's list, but again, I am guessing that it is part of the original phase and not part of the Olympic expansion, but I don't know. Can anybody confirm?
10. St Thomas' Hospital - This didn't appear on the list from Lambeth's Dawn Rahman, but it seems to be an addition to the TFL list.
I'd be delighted to hear from anybody that could explain why the proposed expansion at Vauxhall Station seems to have disappeared from the board?
Also, I'd like to quickly plug Transport Mark's new spreadsheet which runs from the opening day of the Cycle Hire to 12th October 2010 and calculates revenue from various docking stations as a result of longer journeys. It doesn't say anything remarkable about Lambeth usage except to note that the Concert Hall Approach dock (2) and Vauxhall Cross (15) rank well for income and have generated £3,670 of revenue between them. Unsurprisingly, Lollard Street (ranking last at 345) has raised only £17. It pays to be cautious about the placement of the docking stations. I'm wondering whether I've missed something though because although that does not include subscription fees, figures like that seem too low to pay for the scheme.
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Friday 14th June, 2024
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2 comments:
Thanks for the plug! My only comment would be to re-iterate what you're saying about how the data excludes revenue from subscriptions. So if you pay £1/day to use a bike, that £1 doesn't show up in the stats. Of course, if a location were to generate lots of one-day subscriptions, then that could counteract that fact that most of the journeys made from that location were under 30 minutes.
It will be interesting to see how the casual use, which was introduced after these figures were generated, affects the revenue raised by the scheme. Certainly Hyde Park this weekend was rammed full of tourists having a go on the bikes.
However I do worry that there's a real risk that the scheme won't cover its cost.
Bus fares have already gone up by 44% under Boris, and I would find it appalling if the recent fare rises were used to cross-subsidise the bike scheme, especially when a recent article published by the <a href="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23910653-boris-bike-users-are-like-boris-johnson.do>Standard</a> suggests that cycle hire users would probably be able to afford an increase in cost.
The cycle dock opposite the IMO on Albert Embankment is now under construction!
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