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Bernie Hanning introduces OYBIKE [for later news on OYbike see our main page] Notes on hfcyclists meeting, Wednesday 13 February, 7.30pm in the info centre Present: John Griffiths, John Ryan, Louanne Tranchell, Jane Knight, Alex Forrest, Bernie Hanning, Mo Morgan Apologies: Mark Alderton, Roger de Freitas Taking briefer items first, 1 Preparations for our rides in H&F festival of sport and culture. a) Sat 23rd March 11am from cafe at Bishops Park to sports and fitness centres. b) Sunday 24 March 1pm to 4.30pm Family ride, possibly going over river to Barnes and ending up back at Fulham Palace Gardens. Jane will help with design of leaflet. Louanne did not want to wear a bright yellow marshalls jacket. Mo may. We need a few people to come along to show people the way and deal with interesting situations. You could be incognito if you prefer. 2 Our entry for the Transport 2000 Gyratory competition. Is the Broadway the worst in London. John G will send of entry giving our suggestion for surface level crossings on the South side of the Broadway. 3 The Councils Issues Document for its Cycling Strategy. Still not approved for release by Jon Whitwell. Should be ready very soon [now further delayed]. 4 Car Free Day, aka In Town, Without My Car. Sunday 22 September. John Ryan has produced a Draft Action Plan for Car Free Day for the borough that he has sent to the Transport Policy Group and top people at the council. JohnR wrote on behalf of the Transport and Air Quality Group of Local Agenda 21. Jane has being talking to Richard Evans, the National Car Free Day organiser who suggested maybe trying something small to start with. She provided us with a print out from Richard of guidelines for preparing for a CFD event. John G will set up an egroup for those interested in contributing to the discussions. Kings Street was discussed as a place which we would like to see permanently pedestrianised. Louanne was a mine of information on this subject. [Next day Parsons Green Lane was considered favourably as a place for ITWMC] 5 Last in these notes but
actually the first to be discussed. Bernie Hanning and his OYbike proposal.
[Bernie Hanning wishes to trial his invention. For this he proposes using
a not for profit concern operating a bike rental scheme in H&F. The
Council have given the go ahead to look at it more carefully, but have
not yet agreed on accepting the proposal.] Bernie showed how the docking station worked. By phone a user would contact the system giving the number of the bike he wanted to use. A text message back would give an unlocking code. The user would key this number in to the keypad on the docking station and that would release the cable from the docking station. When the user returns a bike he/she needs to send a text message to end the billing period and let the system know the bike is available again. Note there is no communication between the docking station and the base station. Bernie was asked about female bikes. He said only male ones would be available. JohnG said he thought a male bike only scheme would not be acceptable and would not even be considered by the deputy for social inclusion, Cllr Tim Stanley, a keen cyclist who has helped to restore the LCC budget with the ALG recently. JohnG mentioned the Adshel bike rental scheme where there have unisex bikes. Bernie said the frame for unisex bikes would be 5x more expensive, the bike costing 450 rather than 150 pounds. Louanne, mighty but not of great stature, said she would not be able to mount a mans bike. We pointed to Jane's bike, which had a low crossbar, half way between a mans bike and a women's bike. JohnR pointed out that that should be acceptable, and Bernie said that there would still be room to put advertising on it. Louanne was worried about the advertising, saying she would not like to ride a bike with MacDonalds or Nestles on it. JohnG asked if the pricing was settled, or whether it depended on the costs involved. Bernie said it depended on the costs, and if there was a greater expenditure the price of hiring the bike would be more than suggested. There was a lot of discussion about bike stands. Bernie relied on the survey carried out in December of last year. He stated that 80% of parking spaces were unused. He used White City station, the Apollo, and outside Hammersmith and West London College as his reference. [these are the least used in the borough] He said that he was creating more parking spaces for bikes, as each Sheffield stand could now take at least 4 bikes rather than 2. Bernie also said that there was not much space to put more bike stands. JohnG pointed out that the survey was done in winter, looking at spaces only once, and that in the summer and with the great increase in cycling hoped for, there would not be much spare capacity. Bernie said he was going to use 200 stands. After Bernie had left Mo suggested that Bernie should supply a new stand for each one he had used. JohnG was very worried about other cycles being locked to an empty Sheffield stand and then being trapped by 1 to 3 OYbikes. The bikes have long heavy cables, like motor bike lock cables, joining them to the docking station. Just knowing how difficult it is to separate two bikes that have just been leant against each other, with the pedals of one locked in the spokes of another, he could imagine great frustration at trying to unlock and remove a bike trapped under 3 others. JohnG sees this as a possible cause of great conflict. Bernie did not see this as a problem at all. He considered this something to be addressed after the system was up and running. Bernie classified vandalism as being of 2 kinds, mischief and criminal. Bernie said that the bikes would be made as vandal proof as possible. The air valves would be so that you could not let out the air. The seat could be raised or lowered, but not removed. There would be a shaft drive to prevent chain problems. The bikes would not be desirable for theft and resale. Inconvenience caused by spray painting over the display could also be handled over the phone. [The continual checking of the bikes would also be a bonus as abandoned bikes could be tagged and removed.] [By vandalism JohnG had also meant the vandalism that comes from being mildly annoyed, such as the headbanging or karate kicks against dispensing machines that eat your money, or returning the next day with superglue.] JohnG asked if Bernie had looked at other ways of developing the system that would not inconvenience other cyclists. [By this meaning have you thought of putting up your own stands that would not lead to conflicts]. Bernie answered this by saying all cyclists are cyclists whether they own a machine or rent one, so there are not other cyclists? John Ryan brought up that there is a Steering Committee being set up for advancing the proposal, and someone from our group is expected to be invited on to it. John Ryan suggested that John Griffiths should be on it. Bernie explained that he thought JohnG was unsuitable as he thought his intention was to sabotage the project. This came from someone reporting back to him that JohnG had raised concerns about the system and had been negative about it at a central london LCC co-ordinators meeting. However after a while Bernie did say that if the group selected John Griffiths to be on the committee then that is what would be. At the meeting this was left in the air. [However since the meeting JohnG has discussed this with the others who were at the meeting and has decided to put himself forward to be on the steering committee. I am not intent on sabotaging the system, I just think that adequate thought, planning and money should be put into it to make it work properly. And I understand enough about it to forsee problems.] Bernie had supplied written answers to questions that had been put to him before the meeting. This follows ******* Bernie Hanning, creator of the OYbike rental scheme, will give a short presentation and discuss his scheme. The scheme may take a large number of Sheffield stands out of general use. I have asked him to address the following points- I have read that when an OYbike stand is empty other bikes will be able to park there. How many stands do you expect to be empty at least once during the day? 10, 20, 50 say? And then what happens if an OYbike traps the other bike on the stand? How many times a day will that happen? The system will be experimenting with capacity, and until operational experience shows otherwise we will start with 100 bikes for 600 docking points (200 locks) and increasing the number of bikes to 300 for 600 docking points. Therefore on OYbike installations 50% of the capacity will always be empty even if no bikes are out on hire. OYbike can then establish the optimum capacity of the system that will enable continuous circulation of bikes through out the borough. The manner of attachment, by a single cable, that does not involve direct use of the stand, (ie the cable does not encircle the stand), and allows an OYBike to be manoeuvred away from the stand without the need to unlock the OYBike from the docking station. This allows any other bike to be extracted from the space at any time. In reality this increases the capacity of the existing bike stands, which in most cases can only accommodate 2 bikes, to 3 or 4 as the case may be. As a concrete example of how many Sheffield stands you expect to use, how many would you use at the following locations: Kings Mall - Hammersmith Hammersmith Town hall forecourt. At high use destinations it has been shown in the parking survey undertaken by H&F that a number of positions are not fully utilised. As an example Shepherds Bush H&C line station has a 26 stands However, the stands are not all situated together The stands the lay to the eastern side of the station entrance are always full, the stands that lie to west of the entrance are not. This is due to the users, the majority of which commute to the city etc arriving from the residential areas laying to the east of Shepherds Bush Green, They prefer to attach their bikes to the railing than go past the station entrance to the empty stands. The way that OYBike will operates means that the user has to go to the position that the locks are. This enables a far more efficient use of the facilities that have been provided. The H&F survey has pinpointed just over 1000 bike stands in the borough, the pilot scheme is proposing to have 200 OYBike locks/docking stations deployed, which is approx 20% of the existing number of stands, the number of bikes in use will be 50% of that total. When parked the maximum use of stands will be 10%. Taking this into account at the pressure points that you are highlighting 20% use of stands may be sufficient for the pilot operation. The objective of OYBike is to have docking stations widespread throughout the borough an enable the user to experience bicycles as a form of transport akin to a bus you pick up and drop off a a multiple destination not at two or three high use points. How safe are the terminals from vandalism. The terminals have been designed to withstand all but he most determined sabotage There are probably two types of vandalism Mischief and criminal intent that will affect OYBike The first usually entails the younger disenfranchised youth who attack installations because they are excluded in some way. One way of mitigating this type of vandalism is to engage that section of the population by offering a service whereby they could be paid in say mobile phone credits to reposition bikes on weekends when the usage pattern will be different to that of weekday operations. The criminal intent type of vandalism is one where there is some financial gain for the perpetrator to that end OYBike's are not not going to be that attractive for resale. They are not high value fashionable objects of desire and will also have hidden numbers to enable tracing in the case of theft. Having said that the mischief type of vandalism would probably be as suggested spray painting the display and letting tyres down.The system will be able to function if the display is damaged because the call centre can determine the release code from the No on the ID plate of the bike and the No on the id plate of the locking dock. The caller will have also notified OYBike of the nature of the problem and rectification can then be undertaken. To prevent the letting down of tyres scenario I have devised an attachment to the valve to prevent this. How much effort have you put into looking at ways of developing this without inconveniencing other cyclists? I am somewhat perplexed by this question, if someone is riding a bike they are a cyclist per se. Are you proposing that there are classes of cyclist who have precedence over other cyclists, and if so, can you define which other cyclists are being inconvenienced. ************ John Griffiths 020 7371 1290 john@truefeelings.com www.hfcyclists.org.uk
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