Transport for London

The advantage of returning to a city again and again is that you get to see how the urban landscape changes over time.  Since my visit to London over a year ago, two new items have appeared all over the city:  Borris Bikes and new street maps.

Borris Bikes:  In London, bicycles are available for anyone to use in every neighborhood, on all the major thoroughfares, and in many parks.  Officially, the docking stations are called Barclay's Cycle Hire. But, they have been nicknamed Borris Bikes after the flamboyant mayor of London, Borris Johnson.  When the program began, membership was required, but a few months later it became open to anyone, even those with not a quid to their name.  The first 30 minutes are free; an hour is one pound, and up from there you go.  You take the bike from one docking station and leave it at another.  They are extremely popular. Where did this idea come from?  Deep in the recesses of my memory I thought about something we studied about the Netherlands when I was in junior high school.  The Dutch have always loved their bikes and in the period after  World War II (I think) you would ride your bike to the train station, be on your way, and take any bike there when you got back.  All the bikes were essentially the same, so it didn't matter which one you got.  Can anyone confirm this?  You can see the problems that would arise with a scheme like this, but we now have the technology to revisit a good idea in the form of ICT.  The whole Borris Bike system is computer driven.


In London and all of England, so much thought goes into transportation.  In the United States, we have only one thought about transportation:  buy a car,  I really don't know why anyone would want a car in London.  In fact, drivers in Central London pay a Congestion Charge (which can be remitted by cell phone), London's way of trying to reduce traffic on the streets.  The Congestion Charging started in 2003, and I can tell you that it has made a difference. London is more pedestrian friendly and 'greener.' 

Way Finding:  I don't know whether the cycle hire and the new maps were part of a single program, but they seem to have appeared at the same time, and many of the docking stations have a map of the neighborhood.  The picture shows a couple of shoppers in Covent Garden consulting the map,which shows everything within about a 15 minute walk.  Instead of using a traditional scale, they use a circle with a radius of 15 minutes of time, measuring geographical distance in time-space.  They are very attractive and easily read.  (Just a note on other maps I have encountered here:  the TV weather maps are the worst I have seen, or maybe I am spoiled by the great job the American networks have done in using maps to report the weather).

Geographically yours,

D.J.Z.