On 07/11/2012 15:06, Paul Corfield wrote:

I don't particularly understand why the cycle hire scheme charges are
going up quite so much. There wasn't an increase last year plus the
scheme area (and therefore costs) has increased and will increase
again next year. Lots of people are referring to the Barclays
sponsorship issue but it was never going to be the case that Barclays
contributed and kept contributing to expand the scheme. The scheme
sucks up public money and TfL admitted a few months back that it had
no idea as to when the scheme would break even. Expansion to new
boroughs only happens if the boroughs in question fork out millions of
pounds as a contribution.

There was some fuss a while back about Boris Bike usage being dominated
by the kind of people who are found in central London, need to get
around that area and who are able to use conventional bikes. Apparently
this was seen as a Bad Thing by some people. Perhaps such transport
users are seen as being low down the food chain, and able to be charged
more without too much outrage?

Plus they are cyclists, and 110% of cyclists blah rant rant blah rant
rant rant blah (cont'd letters page of any local newspaper).

As for the fares, I'm intrigued by this:
http://www.london.gov.uk/sites/defau...d)%20PDF. pdf

They apparently consider the impact of fares on the "LGB community". Do
people with G-scale model railways in their gardens really make much
difference...?

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK