Give a politician a chance to build a cathedral in the desert and she will take it. Three quarters of a billion spent on building the Dome, billions spent on the Olympic stadia, and now we hear that the London Velib will cost £140 millions. How many kilometres of well designed cycle lanes could have that money bought?
Here are some maths from Robert Davis, author of Death on the Streets:
The cost of running the London bike hire scheme has now been confirmed as £140 million for generating what is hoped to be 40,000 trips per day, or the equivalent of an extra 20,000 daily cyclists making there and back journeys by bike. (There is some revenue accruing to TfL from hirers, but this is probably no more than £5 million p.a. and may be absorbed by publicity or additional costs).
That is the equivalent of £7,000 per extra daily cyclist.
My calculations for the Direct Support for Cycling (DSC) programme in LB Ealing indicate that a regular everyday cyclist can be generated for an average of no more than £1,200. This includes provision of on-road confidence training, waterproof clothing and other equipment, home parking, maintenance training etc. with check up/support and advice visits over three years. This is provision for everyday cyclists in Outer London, where cycling has been neglected, and is generally more unattractive as a travel option than in central London where the bike hire scheme is located.
Also, £1,200 is the equivalent of 3 years subsidy for a daily commuter travelling by bus in London, and less for that of tube or train commuters subsidy over the same period.
A more effective DSC programme with free bicycles could be provided for an average of £1,600, with funding for apprentices and other support for the cycle retail trade for a grand total of £2,000 per each new cyclist. This “platinum brand” scheme would create new jobs, and cost 29% per new cyclist journey of the Bike Hire scheme. The basic DSC programme would cost 15% of the Bike Hire scheme for each new cyclist journey – and as well as doing so in outer London, be more likely to have someone carrying out cycling journeys beyond the term of the 6 year contract of the Bike Hire scheme, when yet more money will have to be paid for it.
Copenhagen has a Bike Hire Scheme, but it is low-key, cheap and meant mostly for tourists. The real money is spent on bike lanes (and on an unfortunate helmet support campaign – more on this later).
UPDATE: Andreas has written a description of the Montreal scheme, run by Bixi, one of the partners of the winning London bid.
Image by Lars Daniel
[...] blog, took a quick look at the numbers and worked out that the cost of the scheme will be around £7,000 per extra daily cyclist, an expensive price [...]
Interesting – have linked to it. Must admit the price tag does sound very expensive. £7,000 per extra cyclist – hefty. Really hope that this scheme works out for the better in London
Just from personal observation: In Paris, the vélib scheme has totally transformed transport in the city. You hardly ever used to see 'normal' people cycle, and now cycling has become a much-loved, flexible, hassle-free option of getting around and you see people of all ages and levels of fitness on bikes. Apparently (and perhaps counter-intuitively) bike sales have also gone up massively, as the Velib scheme has lowered the threshold for people to try cycling in the city, and once they try they get 'hooked' and many want their own bike (as well as still using a velib occasionally). So all in all I think it's a great way of giving cycling a significant boost. I just hope they do it properly in London and provide enough bikes/stations where people actually want them, for example near big rail stations. And I hope the scheme eventually gets extended to the suburbs. On-road confidence training etc. are all excellent measures, and if anything I see demand for this rising even more with the introduction of a Vélib scheme!
Nicola according to some reports they will not be built near railway terminals due to “not wanting to appear like there is never any bikes available giving the scheme a bad image”
However your comments are interesting and the optimist inside me hopes that the scheme is a big success.
I've posted something up about the way it seems the scheme will work: http://www.londoncyclist.co.uk/news/bike-hire-s...
[...] across London. In principle, yes; it’s all about the bike, after all. But the good folk of velorution raise some valid points about the budget, and how it could be better [...]