Borough's First Boris Bike Stations Go Live on December 13
And all 60 to be up and running by spring
The first Barclays Cycle Hire docking stations installed around Hammersmith & Fulham will go live on Friday December 13.
That's the date set for the launch of the south west expansion of the bike hire scheme, which brings it to Hammersmith and Fulham, Wandsworth, Lambeth and Kensington and Chelsea.
The first 14 set of stations are in place around tube stations and parks across the borough, and will be available for use from December 13.
The remaindeer of the station will be open by spring, with around 1,700 bikes available to hire from around 60 docking stations in the borough including from well-known locations like BBC White City, Olympia Exhibition Centre and Charing Cross Hospital.
There will also be stations near the parks of Eel Brook Common, Parsons Green and South Park, and at tube stations including Ravenscourt Park, Putney Bridge, West Kensington and Barons Court. The furthest west docking station will be at Ravenscourt Park tation in Hammersmith.
Each station has a touch screen terminal where you can enter your card details, before getting a ‘release code’ to type into the bike stand and release the bike. When the bike is returned, it just has to be pushed firmly into an empty docking point and it automatically recognises the bike, via its code, and locks it back in.
There is also an option to become a registered member and get a cycle hire key, which allows you to access the bikes all year for £90 - that is 25p per day.
The Barclays Cycle Hire scheme has around 160,000 registered users - 3,900 of whom are H&F residents - with more than 8,000 bicycles at around 570 docking stations across London.
There is already one at Olympia train station, on the Kensington and Chelsea side of the border, and in spring last year four stations were installed at Westfield shopping mall in Shepherds Bush as part of Phase 2 of the scheme.
H&F Council says 200 people offered their views on where the docking stations could be put. Additional suggestions came from council officers and Transport for London, which owns the scheme. Each of the places has had to be reviewed against a set of strict criteria to see if the site is suitable.
The council says it has contributed £2 million towards the popular blue bike hire scheme using ‘Section 106’ funding - money that developers pay to the council to reduce the impact of development and contribute to community improvements, as part of their planning permission.
For more information on cycling in H&F and to see a list of docking station sites that have been approved visit www.lbhf.gov.uk/cycling, and for more information on the council's transport campaign, Get H&F Moving, visitwww.lbhf.gov.uk/getmoving.
December 2, 2013
