What a dumb comment. What does the start price have to do with anything? If a can of beverage was 50p, and the next day it's £1, it can still be good value even still it's only 50p difference.

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.

They were brilliant until they doubled the price.

I worked on the project group when the scheme was being established and for almost 10 months following 'go live'. The original commerce case in fact stated that the scheme would not be a 'final mile' rail user scheme and it came as a bit of a shock at the popularity round the major rail hubs into the city (Waterloo, Paddington, King's Cross, London bridge). As such there was a big effort to develop access in these areas in the morning and evening to the point where we had members of staff collecting bikes from users to free up space or supervising docking stations to make certain there was a bike available. redeployment of the bikes was a major headache.

Oyster wasn't an option due to the limitations of the card not the scheme, the card can only retain a limited quantity of information and there wasn't sufficient space on it to handle the oyster information along with the bike information so it wasn't built-in despite being investigated.

In actual fact i imagine that the stats illustrate that the best part of users are boris-esque. White middle aged men who use it as another way to get about. Ill see if i can the article.

EDIT: The article (although a bit old now) http://www.standard.co.uk/news/boris-bike-users-are-like-boris-johnson-6551622.html

Two separate things.

If something costing £45 is great, then I would think the price point at which it is too pricey to use to be quite notably higher than £90.

If the price had gone to £300 per year, and somebody said that at £45 they used it a lot, except now the value for money characteristic means it is a inadequate service, then I would have nodded in agreement.

But for something to transition from fantastic at £45 to dire at £90 is too steep a curve for any market economist to accept.

I worked on the project group when the scheme was being established and for almost 10 months following 'go live'. The original commerce case in fact stated that the scheme would not be a 'final mile' rail user scheme and it came as a bit of a shock at the popularity round the major rail hubs into the city (Waterloo, Paddington, King's Cross, London bridge). As such there was a big effort to develop access in these areas in the morning and evening to the point where we had members of staff collecting bikes from users to free up space or supervising docking stations to make certain there was a bike available. redeployment of the bikes was a major headache.

Oyster wasn't an option due to the limitations of the card not the scheme, the card can only retain a limited quantity of information and there wasn't sufficient space on it to handle the oyster information along with the bike information so it wasn't built-in despite being investigated.

In actual fact i imagine that the stats illustrate that the best part of users are boris-esque. White middle aged men who use it as another way to get about. Ill see if i can the article.

EDIT: The article (although a bit old now) http://www.standard.co.uk/news/boris-bike-users-are-like-boris-johnson-6551622.html

Which works as a notion if you design to go from A to B by bike.

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.

> The original business case in fact stated that the scheme would not be a 'final mile' commuter scheme and it came as a bit of a surprise at the popularity around the major rail hubs into the city

It's easy to say this in hindsight, but wasn't this a little naive?

Also, if you don't mind me asking who thought it was a good idea to make the system such that if you ask for two keys you'll always get charged twice the daily rate not considering of whether you use both keys on that day? Similarly, I can't have a key coupled to my debit card plus use that same debit card for paying for an addition cycle at the dock. Is this issue finally fixed now (haven't tried in the last year)?

Oyster was an option. Tfl didn't want to pay to have it implemented.

The benefit of using cards rather than oyster is that if somebody damages or steals a cycle they hire it is easier to charge a bank card that is stored in the system for the expense of the bike/repair than charging an Oyster card, most of which are not linked to a card and don't include personal information.