Three years of Boris Bikes: How do people use them?
By Dilla at 2013-08-17 11:32:53
London, UK
101 replies
13883 views
Wouldn't like to put it throughout the same test that moterbiker did on /r/wtf...
One argument is that wearing/doing something that makes you feel safer will lead to more accidents as you become less worried about road safety.
Although the outcome is accepted, the degree it actually affects road safety is hotly contested.
The other issue is that requiring people to carry a cycle helmet around just in case they might want to hire a bike would almost certainly reduce useage, and then you have to calculate whether the overall health benefits for society is worth one or two dead cyclists.
Didn't work.
This really does not make up for the day you drop off your bike nevertheless and they have to ladle bits of your brain into a bag instead of giving you a plaster for that unpleasant scrape on your arm.
Wouldn't like to put it throughout the same test that moterbiker did on /r/wtf...
One argument is that wearing/doing something that makes you feel safer will lead to more accidents as you become less worried about road safety.
Although the outcome is accepted, the degree it actually affects road safety is hotly contested.
The other issue is that requiring people to carry a cycle helmet around just in case they might want to hire a bike would almost certainly reduce useage, and then you have to calculate whether the overall health benefits for society is worth one or two dead cyclists.
And none of them whatsoever have been in any way conclusive.
http://road.cc/content/news/85306-top-scientists-cycle-helmets-debate-will-go-and-and
Meanwhile, the helmet manufacturing industry go on to demand legislators to reduce the testing standards required to put bicycle helmets on sale.
Do not RELY on a bicycle helmet to deal you any protection whatsoever.
So something that cost £45 a year was in fact good value and you used it a lot, but something that costs £90 is now such dire value that you wont employ it at all.
That just doesn't make sense.
Also not everybody needs a year subscription. The casual price has also doubled, and when it all of a sudden costs less to take a bus, or just 10p more to catch the tube wherever in zone 1, then yes that value has dramatically changed, markedly when you still only get a miserable 30 minutes.
Maybe if they were on Oyster it would help. Also if they were more prevalent in zones 2 and 3, so people may possibly use them for local journeys in the region of where they live. If I'm in zone 1, I've perhaps had to get the bus or tube to where I was going anyway.
Oddly, I would say the literal opposite.
They are a bit of a pest for casual users -- markedly working out how to use the access codes if you are not comfortable with them.
But for standard users with an yearly pass they are brilliant for short hops round the place where you might have once used a bus or the tube.
Just take a look in the rush hour to see floods of commuters looking for one to end the mile of their journey connecting train station and office.
I think that's a enormous factor/benefit that never truly gets measured. Raising the appeal and awareness in cycling.
Drivers may be more aggressive and time and again uncouth pricks in London, but they are in general much more perceptive of cyclists on the road, while in Derbyshire cyclists are so infrequent drivers on autopilot are often just wholly ignorant of your existence. I may have had rows with dangerously selfish arseholes in London, but i've by no means had anybody almost take me out.
In the Northern Countryside, though - I've had nothing but time and again excessive levels of patience and considerateness. I've even had black cab drivers present useful route advice. Seems everybody has at least a passing hobby in cycling around such parts.
So something that cost £45 a year was in fact good value and you used it a lot, but something that costs £90 is now such dire value that you wont employ it at all.
That just doesn't make sense.
So something that cost £45 a year was in fact good value and you used it a lot, but something that costs £90 is now such dire value that you wont employ it at all.
That just doesn't make sense.
I tend to use the hire bikes in the way they were intended -- for short hops around town devoid of any need for pre-planning.
I can cycle into town, gulp beers, go shopping etc after that tube home.
So something that cost £45 a year was in fact good value and you used it a lot, but something that costs £90 is now such dire value that you wont employ it at all.
That just doesn't make sense.
Also not everybody needs a year subscription. The casual price has also doubled, and when it all of a sudden costs less to take a bus, or just 10p more to catch the tube wherever in zone 1, then yes that value has dramatically changed, markedly when you still only get a miserable 30 minutes.
Bangs head on counter at sheer stupidity of people at times.
Of course when something costs 50p and goes to £1 that is a considerable hike in cost for an item of negligible consumer value.
Would -- for another equally stupid example then -- a 50p price rise on a the cost of a motor car make it poor value for money? Of course it wouldn't.
But for something costing just £45 to be to then transition to being so bad as to be avoided, then I would think the price point to change by more than £45.
It's not just me thinking this - TfL hires heaps of very smart people to crunch these sorts of numbers, and there is no way they would have recommended a £90 price point if the value for money dispute was so poor than the bikes would be abandoned overnight as uneconomic.
