Mobike coming to Brent?

It looks like Brent will be the next London borough to get dockless bikeshare, with Mobike likely to be setting up in the borough within the next few weeks. The operator is not confirmed, although strongly hinted at, including by the council themselves. The choice of Mobike makes sense, as the operator already has a fleet of bikes in the two boroughs to its south, allowing journeys across quite a wide area of west London – although if you want to journey to the centre of the capital on a Mobike, you will still need to finish your journey in Islington or the City, or return the bike back to the three West London boroughs.

Above is my latest map of London boroughs, showing bikeshare provision. The red circles show Santander Cycles docking stations, while the other colours show the spread of dockless bikeshare – yellow (Ofo), orange (Mobike) and green (Urbo). Darker grey shades show areas of the capital with a high proportion of the resident population cycling to work (2011 census).

In parts of Islington, Ofo bikes seem to have virtually disappeared from streets where they were previously very visible on, while Mobikes are very visible but lined up in neat, operator-placed rows, rather than in the more organic placement you would expect from bona-fide users. There have been no London usage numbers released by the operators so far, which suggests they are not good. To be fair – it is wintertime and it is still early days.