
On Friday, the Barclays London Cycle Hire scheme was launched, with many of the sites and bicycles now available for those who have pre-registered their details, and have been supplied a personal key for accessing the bikes. Over time, the ability to walk up and purchase hire with a credit card will be added, but right now, users need to be registered with a hardware key.
I think this is a brilliant scheme; if you take the £45 annual access option (plus £3 for the hardware key), then for less than £50 you can hire a bike for up to 30 minutes for free, and that sounds a more interesting option than the overcrowded and hot (although air conditioning is slowly coming over the next few decades) tube lines in central London. In fact, if you put the bike back and wait at least 5 minutes (go get yourself a coffee, and drink it), then you can hire another bike for another 30 minutes for free.
To support the scheme, a number of clever individuals / companies have developed mobile apps for the London Cycle Hire scheme. I have to stress none of these apps are directly sponsored or supported by Transport for London, although much of the functionality of these apps comes from published APIs, although some isn’t…
These mobile apps don’t just show you the places where the bikes can be hired from; they are often taking data from the Cycle Hire website and also including how many bikes are available (and equally how many empty slots there are for returning your bike). In fact, this area is one where I’m glad to say they have thought about the problem of a full cycle rack and come up with a solution; if you arrive at your destination bike rack and it’s full, you can select on the touchscreen terminal an option to see where there are available slots nearby, and if needed, you will also get an additional 15 minutes of free extra hire time to get the bike to that location.
Firstly, there’s an iPhone app from London Cycle App, which includes the information on the numbers of bikes / slots available, and I also note it uses the OpenStreetMap data for the mapping, which is a nice touch too (screenshot above). In fact, they have also included the ability to plan a cycle route through London too, which is a nice extra feature. The app is available to download here.
Cycle Hire App is another option, which also uses OpenStreetMap maps, and like the London Cycle App, has these maps available when offline (or for use on an iPod Touch). One nice feature is the ability to request a search for bikes available near London attractions, as well as tube and train stations, and general locations (postcode based).
Another alternative is Bixou (for the iPhone), which although originally developed for the BIXI bicycle hire scheme in Montreal, now has support for the London scheme too (in fact it also supports the Melbourne and Minneapolis schemes too).
For Android, there’s a widget, which has been produced by Little Fluffy Toys. When first touched, the widget will display the details of the 3 nearest hire locations, with their status (Ok, not enough bikes, not enough spare slots, closed), and when touched again, provides a detailed view of the information. This app is interesting though; instead of as well as taking the bike / slots details from the TfL website, it uses crowdsourcing to collect the information; as a nice touch, if you open the details screen within 50 metres of a hire location, you are asked to provide an updated status for all other users.
Update: Thanks to Kevin for pointing out Bixou as an alternative option.
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