Boris Bikes need a new sponsor - help turn them into Boris BEASTS with this crowdfunding campaign

Nice bit of free publicity for this company...

My money would be on a large media company offering to take on the bikes as a flexible set of mobile billboards, a detail TfL has already accepted by placing a set of yellow le Tour Yorkshire bikes out on the street, and allowing non-black taxis, and non-red buses.

Whilst JC Decaux refused to bid for the original scheme to supply bikes (being promoted at that time separately from the sponsorship element) because it did not fit their basic business model which integrated the bike supply with the media value, I'd note that they now deliver supply the branding media clients for the Copenhagen scheme, which has now been running for 19 years, with running costs underwritten by the sale of blocks of branded bikes.

This change in the way the London bikes might be funded would probably require a relationship similar to that used for London Rail and London Buses, where a media company (eg Decaux, Clear Channel etc), has a base contract as an exclusive supplier of clients to buy the poster, vehicle and panel sites, possibly with a surplus-share deal to reflect any market developments and opportunities - as an example some of the Nextbike fleet in Berlin have a USB charging socket running from the dynamo fitted on the bikes promoting the General Electric energy campaign.

However based on known current prices for branding bikes elsewhere in Europe the 10,000 BCH bikes would only generate £3.8m or thereabouts in branding revenue, unless London was seen as a location with premium rating, and the media agency gained both kudos in being the overall branding sponsor, and London opened up the market to support the delivery of public bikes elsewhere in the UK.

The other detail to seriously address is the costly ways in which the BCH scheme is operated, a detail I pointed out back in 2009, when my comments were not to the liking of TfL. After all I'd only been involved in working with public bike hire systems since 1995, including the London scheme which was up and running at the time (Oybike launched in W London in 2004). The situation is recoverable with the current fleet (although in 2017, when the Serco-Bixi contract ends and bikes will be getting very expensive to keep in good condition).

To cut the costs, and improve the service for commuters, the tariffs should be revised, to cater for the commuter taking a bike from the London terminus, keeping it at work all day, and then bringing it back to the place they collected it - saving a lot of the bike balancing costs. The issue and return of bikes at places like Waterloo can also be greatly streamlined - Waterloo would only need 10-20 docking points if the mass issue and return over 2 relatively short periods was done more efficiently.

The other alternative - for commuters is the Brompton Dock, the folding bike that goes everywhere with you, and examples of London commuters making massive reductions in their journey times, whilst also cutting the costs of car parking at their home station and London tube and bus travel, those latter two typically being in the region of £2,000-£2,800 per year - at a cost of around £700/year for bike hire, again a system offering a key opportunity for a branding partner.

In 2017 the whole detail of requiring the slow to install and expensive system used by London, itself far more expensive than the standard Bixi product used in New York, should be re-examined. Many 4th generation cycle hire systems require only the bikes to be placed on the street, and do not need 50% of the docking points to be empty to allow bikes to circulate. The German Nextbike company now launched in Glasgow and Bath, has already operated bike hire in Birmingham and Leeds for 2 days apiece during the Cycle City Expo conferences, and every year puts a huge fleet of additional bikes on the streets of Leipzig for a media festival. Their success as a private commercial operation since 2005, now in 18 countries, with over 20,000 bikes, links in to the ability to get an agreed bike hire scheme up and running often within hours.

My money would be on a large media company offering to take on the bikes as a flexible set of mobile billboards, a detail TfL has already accepted by placing a set of yellow le Tour Yorkshire bikes out on the street, and allowing non-black taxis, and non-red buses.

Whilst JC Decaux refused to bid for the original scheme to supply bikes (being promoted at that time separately from the sponsorship element) because it did not fit their basic business model which integrated the bike supply with the media value, I'd note that they now deliver supply the branding media clients for the Copenhagen scheme, which has now been running for 19 years, with running costs underwritten by the sale of blocks of branded bikes.

This change in the way the London bikes might be funded would probably require a relationship similar to that used for London Rail and London Buses, where a media company (eg Decaux, Clear Channel etc), has a base contract as an exclusive supplier of clients to buy the poster, vehicle and panel sites, possibly with a surplus-share deal to reflect any market developments and opportunities - as an example some of the Nextbike fleet in Berlin have a USB charging socket running from the dynamo fitted on the bikes promoting the General Electric energy campaign.

However based on known current prices for branding bikes elsewhere in Europe the 10,000 BCH bikes would only generate £3.8m or thereabouts in branding revenue, unless London was seen as a location with premium rating, and the media agency gained both kudos in being the overall branding sponsor, and London opened up the market to support the delivery of public bikes elsewhere in the UK.

The other detail to seriously address is the costly ways in which the BCH scheme is operated, a detail I pointed out back in 2009, when my comments were not to the liking of TfL. After all I'd only been involved in working with public bike hire systems since 1995, including the London scheme which was up and running at the time (Oybike launched in W London in 2004). The situation is recoverable with the current fleet (although in 2017, when the Serco-Bixi contract ends and bikes will be getting very expensive to keep in good condition).

To cut the costs, and improve the service for commuters, the tariffs should be revised, to cater for the commuter taking a bike from the London terminus, keeping it at work all day, and then bringing it back to the place they collected it - saving a lot of the bike balancing costs. The issue and return of bikes at places like Waterloo can also be greatly streamlined - Waterloo would only need 10-20 docking points if the mass issue and return over 2 relatively short periods was done more efficiently.

The other alternative - for commuters is the Brompton Dock, the folding bike that goes everywhere with you, and examples of London commuters making massive reductions in their journey times, whilst also cutting the costs of car parking at their home station and London tube and bus travel, those latter two typically being in the region of £2,000-£2,800 per year - at a cost of around £700/year for bike hire, again a system offering a key opportunity for a branding partner.

In 2017 the whole detail of requiring the slow to install and expensive system used by London, itself far more expensive than the standard Bixi product used in New York, should be re-examined. Many 4th generation cycle hire systems require only the bikes to be placed on the street, and do not need 50% of the docking points to be empty to allow bikes to circulate. The German Nextbike company now launched in Glasgow and Bath, has already operated bike hire in Birmingham and Leeds for 2 days apiece during the Cycle City Expo conferences, and every year puts a huge fleet of additional bikes on the streets of Leipzig for a media festival. Their success as a private commercial operation since 2005, now in 18 countries, with over 20,000 bikes, links in to the ability to get an agreed bike hire scheme up and running often within hours.

My money would be on a large media company offering to take on the bikes as a flexible set of mobile billboards, a detail TfL has already accepted by placing a set of yellow le Tour Yorkshire bikes out on the street, and allowing non-black taxis, and non-red buses.

Whilst JC Decaux refused to bid for the original scheme to supply bikes (being promoted at that time separately from the sponsorship element) because it did not fit their basic business model which integrated the bike supply with the media value, I'd note that they now deliver supply the branding media clients for the Copenhagen scheme, which has now been running for 19 years, with running costs underwritten by the sale of blocks of branded bikes.

This change in the way the London bikes might be funded would probably require a relationship similar to that used for London Rail and London Buses, where a media company (eg Decaux, Clear Channel etc), has a base contract as an exclusive supplier of clients to buy the poster, vehicle and panel sites, possibly with a surplus-share deal to reflect any market developments and opportunities - as an example some of the Nextbike fleet in Berlin have a USB charging socket running from the dynamo fitted on the bikes promoting the General Electric energy campaign.

However based on known current prices for branding bikes elsewhere in Europe the 10,000 BCH bikes would only generate £3.8m or thereabouts in branding revenue, unless London was seen as a location with premium rating, and the media agency gained both kudos in being the overall branding sponsor, and London opened up the market to support the delivery of public bikes elsewhere in the UK.

The other detail to seriously address is the costly ways in which the BCH scheme is operated, a detail I pointed out back in 2009, when my comments were not to the liking of TfL. After all I'd only been involved in working with public bike hire systems since 1995, including the London scheme which was up and running at the time (Oybike launched in W London in 2004). The situation is recoverable with the current fleet (although in 2017, when the Serco-Bixi contract ends and bikes will be getting very expensive to keep in good condition).

To cut the costs, and improve the service for commuters, the tariffs should be revised, to cater for the commuter taking a bike from the London terminus, keeping it at work all day, and then bringing it back to the place they collected it - saving a lot of the bike balancing costs. The issue and return of bikes at places like Waterloo can also be greatly streamlined - Waterloo would only need 10-20 docking points if the mass issue and return over 2 relatively short periods was done more efficiently.

The other alternative - for commuters is the Brompton Dock, the folding bike that goes everywhere with you, and examples of London commuters making massive reductions in their journey times, whilst also cutting the costs of car parking at their home station and London tube and bus travel, those latter two typically being in the region of £2,000-£2,800 per year - at a cost of around £700/year for bike hire, again a system offering a key opportunity for a branding partner.

In 2017 the whole detail of requiring the slow to install and expensive system used by London, itself far more expensive than the standard Bixi product used in New York, should be re-examined. Many 4th generation cycle hire systems require only the bikes to be placed on the street, and do not need 50% of the docking points to be empty to allow bikes to circulate. The German Nextbike company now launched in Glasgow and Bath, has already operated bike hire in Birmingham and Leeds for 2 days apiece during the Cycle City Expo conferences, and every year puts a huge fleet of additional bikes on the streets of Leipzig for a media festival. Their success as a private commercial operation since 2005, now in 18 countries, with over 20,000 bikes, links in to the ability to get an agreed bike hire scheme up and running often within hours.

So glad it's the bike in leopardskin and not Boris

So who can I sue the instant this massive free flowing tail causes a accident, or do we crowd fund that also.

Needs whiskers.