IN THE DOCK

Will ofo’s docking-free ‘Uber for bikes’ help Cambridge cyclists? No, reckons Rob Ainsley

Canal St Martin, in Paris’s 10th arrondissement, was drained for maintenance last year. Photos show dozens of bikes exposed in the swampy mud, like dinosaur fossils.

Over in Amsterdam, the full-time bicycle-fishing crew excavating its canal network removes 15,000 a year. They’re a real danger to craft. Snagging your bottom on protruding handlebars is as much a problem for boats as it is for passengers trying to squeeze past Northern Railway’s pokey ‘bike spaces’.

Now we can join in, thanks to an innovative new bike-sharing scheme in Cambridge by Chinese startup company ofo. (All lower case: the name’s supposed to look like a cyclist. Obviously young, slim entrepreneurs, I’d be more like o8o.) They are already in 200 Chinese universities. In UK universities, of course, we already have free ad hoc personal transport – shopping trolleys.

The advantage is there are no docking stations, which makes things cheap and simple. The disadvantage is that there are no docking stations, which means the yellow bikes are ‘immobilised’ only by a flimsy wheel lock. When you want a bike, pay 50p, and an app gives you a release code for the nearest one, wherever the previous hirer left it – or, perhaps, where a subsequent reveller pushed it into the River Cam. The company’s sketchy about the details, such as whether ofo’s UK bikes will have lights (none do in China, so they’ll be like most bikes in Cambridge), or whether the code-release software works under water.

I’m exaggerating the aquatic risks. Amsterdam’s got two million bikes, so not even 0.1 per cent of them go swimming every year. But there’s potential for theft, vandalism, and a bigger problem: parking. Cambridge is lacking, despite having just revamped the station area with more spaces. No one knows how many, because it clogged up with bikes before anyone could count the racks. Those 500 extra ofo bikes,

When you want a bike, pay 50p, and an app gives you a release code for the nearest one

hastily left blocking lecture-hall entrances by students, or station approaches by commuters, won’t help.

But ofo runs subsidy-free, which could appeal to cash-strapped cities. London’s bike hire scheme costs sponsors and taxpayers £25m a year for 10m rides: £2.50 subsidy per trip, mostly paying for bike redistribution by pickup truck in response to commuter tides.

There are 500 city-bike-hire schemes worldwide. Some are thriving – Paris’s is 10 years old and London’s is used more than ever. But others are not – Seattle’s closed, hampered by helmet laws; Melbourne’s is struggling similarly and half of Spain’s 130 have folded. They’re great fun for visitors, but do they encourage people into regular utility cycling?

Yes, concludes Carplus’s new cross-UK survey. It reckons such schemes encourage women cyclists (only 25 per cent of ownerriders, but 40 per cent of bike-share users) and gets people out of vehicles (22 per cent of scheme riders previously commuted by car or taxi).

But are there better ways of using that maintenance cash? Why not pay commuters £2.50 per trip to use their own bikes? Enough each year to buy a decent new bike. Sadly, experiments along those lines were tried recently in Sweden, Italy and France, with disappointing results. And it might not be popular with partners who think you already have too many bikes.

Why not expand the Cycle to Work scheme, which enables tax-break bikes to be bought cheaply in instalments out of your salary? That’s no good to the increasingly numerous self-employed or otherwise unsalaried. And I know many people who’ve bought a bike this way, but few who actually cycle to work on it. Bike libraries? Yorkshire’s trying it as a Tour legacy, with 36 so far, but it’s aimed more at kids and families than commuters.

The obstacles to getting more people on to bikes more often are not, evidence shows, anything tweakable in these schemes. It’s the cycle facilities. Reluctant cyclists are so because there are no safe and pleasant routes to work or the shops. Even if you put in half-decent cycle tracks, people will drive if the city’s car-centric, as Stevenage proves. Local boy Lewis Hamilton was bound to become a racing driver over a cyclist.

So will ofo get legions of new people onto bikes? I doubt it. It might, however, encourage a few people to train as divers.