New private bike hire scheme trialled in Southall for local residents
Outside Southall station in West London is what looks like one of TfL’s cycle hire docking stations, which is a long way from where there should be one, but you might notice that it’s the wrong colour.
It’s in fact a trial of a private scheme being provided for the residents of the local housing development, The Green Quarter to help them get around their estate.
The estate is a long strip of land running alongside the railway and is roughly a dead end at the far point, so it doesn’t have a bus route through it at the moment. At the moment, it could take someone about 15 minutes to walk from Southall station to the far end of the estate.
Hence the bike trial.
The bikes are supplied by the British bike firm, Pashley, which also supplies the TfL hire bikes, hence their familiar appearance.
The fleet has a total of 30 bikes available throughout the development, with six docking stations. Half of the docks are located opposite Southall Station, while the rest are dotted around the development. Currently only available to residents on the estate, they get 30 minutes of free use per day though their residents smartphone app.
One of the advantages of providing a docking station based free bike hire scheme is that it could reduce the clutter of discarded dockless bikes being left on pavements around the area. Berkley says that it’s the first time a housing development has offered a resident-only bike programme, although it’s only a trial at the moment.
According to the explanatory sign next to the docking station, if the trial is a success, it could be expanded outside the estate to the wider community.
This could potentially open up a situation in the future where cycle hire network expansions, which are currently part funded by councils through Section 106 funds, could also be expanded by housing developers building micro-networks and plugging them into the main TfL billing system. Maybe.
Whoopee – do. More stolen bikes beeing ridden around and dumped anywhere.
Goody. Just what we need even more bikes to abandon in the middle of pavements.
These bikes are like the Santander bikes which are less easy to steal/hack to use without paying, and there is (presumably) a significant financial sanction if the bike is not docked at the end of journey (certainly that is the case for Santander).
More of this sort of scheme please and more money to extend Santander scheme as well please.
Any abandoned bikes of this sort is because bike was not properly redocked (didn’t wait for the “green” light on the dock or dock failed) or was stolen while “in use” (left outside a shop or house for a minute and then TWOC’ed or a vehicular mugging).
The issue is with the **dockless** bikes where inconsiderate parking is not properly sanctioned by the operator (they can do this when demanded by local authority) or where some of the bikes were easy to “hack” for a free ride (click click click).