Record number of people ride 'Boris Bikes' after lockdown rental slump
More people hired a bicycle over the Bank Holiday than on any other non-strike day in the history of London’s public pay-as-you-ride scheme.
Nearly 69,000 “Boris Bike” rentals were made on Monday, leaving many of Transport for London’s pavement docking hubs empty across the capital after restrictions around outdoor exercise began to ease.
The figures were revealed by City University data expert Professor Jo Wood who discovered the record of 66,828 hires, following a cycle rental slump at the peak of lockdown.
Hire rates were more than double the daily average and meant each of the fleet’s 12,000 bikes was rented the equivalent of more than three times.
Commuter hotspots such as Bank and Holborn are still seeing demand halved, but leisure use is peaking around the green spaces of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Hyde Park and Wandsworth Common.
Santander-sponsored docking stations around Putney and Clapham have seen up to 10 times the demand of their normal use.
Videos posted online revealed the huge volume of cyclists now on London’s roads - while lockdown rules still instruct Londoners to avoid public transport as much as possible - helped by temperatures of 26C and fewer vehicles congesting roads.
Some riders were seen wiping down the shared handgrips with disinfectant wipes before use.
Analysis was compiled by City, University of London’s giCentre, which has been examining London’s public cycle hire scheme since its launch in 2010.
It was done by computing data from about 800 docking stations, which report via mobile network cards how many bicycles are docked at each one.
TfL said that “Monday was the highest volume on a non-strike day”, adding that the previous weekend “the busiest in the scheme’s history” with a combined two-day total of more than 97,500 trips.
Monday’s peak contrasted with rental freefall at the end of April, when only about 6,000 bicycles were rented in 24 hours.
The all-time record of more than 73,000 hires was achieved in July 2015 during a Tube strike leaving commuters scouring map apps to find the last available docked cycles.
There are usually about 29,500 daily rentals on average, according to TfL figures from 2018.
Professor Wood, who specialises in visualising complex datasets and is the giCentre’s co-director, said: “Not only are more people cycling, but they are cycling in different places and at different times.
“Since lockdown, for obvious reasons, we no longer see large numbers making commuting journeys, but instead we see demand spread more evenly through the day and across London.”
