New sponsors sought for London's cycle hire scheme

Sky would seem the most obvious to me with their 'Sky Ride', and the colour scheme doesn't need changing either so a quick stick on logo has it sorted!

The current fleet are reaching the stage at which renewal of the bikes, or a complete rebuild is required - as they hit the far side of the bath-tub curve and mean time between failures starts to decrease exponentially.

So a new sponsor should seriously be considering a full fleet renewal or rebuilding. Serco may also want to decline the renewal of their contract to run the scheme, which also reaches a break-point.

The operation has a major problem in that it was never meant to deliver bikes for rail commuters to get to & from their offices, using the tariff structure and hardware specified by TfL. As a result crippling costs to put out around 500 bikes at Waterloo through 126 docking points (which the system demands are used for the wasteful triple handling process in the morning and evening peak bring bike from store, dock bike, user undocks bike & user returns bike to dock, staff undock bike and move to store), and then the situation in EC1/EC2 when the 500 Waterloo bikes get parked between 08.00 and 09.00 and sit all day before a huge demand for bikes at 17.00.

The hard wired Bixi system was a special system demanded by TfL, everywhere else Bixi operates like a 4th generation system with docking points that can be paced on the street and operational in around an hour, or operated from trailers that can be wheeled out or taken away as they are filled and emptied. Systems like Call-a-Bike and Nextbike - planning to start in Bath, Glasgow & Stirling require no fixed hardware on street, and Nextbike places over 1000 extra bikes out in Leipzig for a media festival - overnight (they have operated bike hire for 2 days at Birmingham and Leeds Cycle City Expo conferences, for conference delegates). There might equally be a place for the London-built Brompton hired out through Brompton Docks as the 'keep all day/all week' hire bike. more suitable for a city commuter.

Only 2 bidders from the original 6 actually looked serious when the Serco-Bixi deal was signed and the Serco-Bixi bid combined a bidder with a system (albeit not in use anywhere at that time) and a bidder with resources, but no system. the OYBike system, already running automated bike hire in West London, since 2004, failed to prequalify to bid, as TfL's assessment considered that they had insufficient resources (odd given that at that time Veolia Transportation was a 49% shareholder). The other bidder was Clear Channel, who had both resources, and a system developed from 1997 (Rennes) onwards. JC Decaux declined to bid, as the funding model did not fit their preferred system, likewise the German Call-a-Bike did not 'fit' the operational system demanded by the TfL specification.

This time around? Well I'd expect any sponsor to want a change to the expensive operational system, and possibly (as renewal is due) an enhanced fleet of bikes. Rather than the 'all your eggs in one basket' funding by a block sponsor, TfL might look at the successful PRIVATE and PROFIT-making operation of Nextbike, who sell the branding space on their bikes to keep the operating costs down, and have a system which does not require docking stations if the number of bikes needs to be varied, or a surge of demand sends bikes to a particular location. In Berlin, bikes sponsored by an energy supplier included a USB socket for charging mobile devices as you cycled along.

Keep your eyes peeled and get along to sample the bikes in Glasgow and Bath, when they arrive later this month - or perhaps the Hourbike systems in Liverpool, Lincoln and Nottingham.

The current fleet are reaching the stage at which renewal of the bikes, or a complete rebuild is required - as they hit the far side of the bath-tub curve and mean time between failures starts to decrease exponentially.

So a new sponsor should seriously be considering a full fleet renewal or rebuilding. Serco may also want to decline the renewal of their contract to run the scheme, which also reaches a break-point.

The operation has a major problem in that it was never meant to deliver bikes for rail commuters to get to & from their offices, using the tariff structure and hardware specified by TfL. As a result crippling costs to put out around 500 bikes at Waterloo through 126 docking points (which the system demands are used for the wasteful triple handling process in the morning and evening peak bring bike from store, dock bike, user undocks bike & user returns bike to dock, staff undock bike and move to store), and then the situation in EC1/EC2 when the 500 Waterloo bikes get parked between 08.00 and 09.00 and sit all day before a huge demand for bikes at 17.00.

The hard wired Bixi system was a special system demanded by TfL, everywhere else Bixi operates like a 4th generation system with docking points that can be paced on the street and operational in around an hour, or operated from trailers that can be wheeled out or taken away as they are filled and emptied. Systems like Call-a-Bike and Nextbike - planning to start in Bath, Glasgow & Stirling require no fixed hardware on street, and Nextbike places over 1000 extra bikes out in Leipzig for a media festival - overnight (they have operated bike hire for 2 days at Birmingham and Leeds Cycle City Expo conferences, for conference delegates). There might equally be a place for the London-built Brompton hired out through Brompton Docks as the 'keep all day/all week' hire bike. more suitable for a city commuter.

Only 2 bidders from the original 6 actually looked serious when the Serco-Bixi deal was signed and the Serco-Bixi bid combined a bidder with a system (albeit not in use anywhere at that time) and a bidder with resources, but no system. the OYBike system, already running automated bike hire in West London, since 2004, failed to prequalify to bid, as TfL's assessment considered that they had insufficient resources (odd given that at that time Veolia Transportation was a 49% shareholder). The other bidder was Clear Channel, who had both resources, and a system developed from 1997 (Rennes) onwards. JC Decaux declined to bid, as the funding model did not fit their preferred system, likewise the German Call-a-Bike did not 'fit' the operational system demanded by the TfL specification.

This time around? Well I'd expect any sponsor to want a change to the expensive operational system, and possibly (as renewal is due) an enhanced fleet of bikes. Rather than the 'all your eggs in one basket' funding by a block sponsor, TfL might look at the successful PRIVATE and PROFIT-making operation of Nextbike, who sell the branding space on their bikes to keep the operating costs down, and have a system which does not require docking stations if the number of bikes needs to be varied, or a surge of demand sends bikes to a particular location. In Berlin, bikes sponsored by an energy supplier included a USB socket for charging mobile devices as you cycled along.

Keep your eyes peeled and get along to sample the bikes in Glasgow and Bath, when they arrive later this month - or perhaps the Hourbike systems in Liverpool, Lincoln and Nottingham.

Do the same as Barclays did, promise money, have all of the bikes re-branded, then refuse to pay.