The latest outputs from researchers, alumni and friends at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA).
Yes, we did it again. All the Docks 2 took place in London on 9 July. Five teams (up from three last time) each cycled between a fifth of the Santander Cycles docking stations in London. I again did the routes, splitting up the ~800 docking stations into 5 routes of 160 docking stations apiece. […]
Continue reading »Routes I created GPX route files for the challenge. These were created manually in QGIS, using the OpenStreetMap standard “Mapnik” render as a background, by drawing lines, with Google Street View imagery used to check restrictions. I split each team’s route into 12 stages (so 36 altogether), which were initially each just over 10km and […]
Continue reading »Routes I created GPX route files for the challenge. These were created manually in QGIS, using the OpenStreetMap standard “Mapnik” render as a background, by drawing lines, with Google Street View imagery used to check restrictions. I split each team’s route into 12 stages (so 36 altogether), which were initially each just over 10km and […]
Continue reading »Routes I created GPX route files for the challenge. These were created manually in QGIS, using the OpenStreetMap standard “Mapnik” render as a background, by drawing lines, with Google Street View imagery used to check restrictions. I split each team’s route into 12 stages (so 36 altogether), which were initially each just over 10km and […]
Continue reading »On Monday I will be attempting to visit every Santander Cycles docking station in east London by bike, starting at 9am outside the velodrome in the Lea Valley VeloPark (the famous one from the London 2012 Olympics), cycling over 70 miles and hopefully finishing sometime that evening close to the London Transport Museum in the […]
Continue reading »Recently I become part of the editorial team at the Bike-Sharing World Map (this is a new version, not yet launched) which is the world’s only comprehensive map of bikeshare systems, listing the approximately 2000 active systems along with another 1000 that are either in planning or already closed. The Bike-Sharing World Map was compiled […]
Continue reading »There’s a new bikeshare in London – HumanForest launched yesterday (Wednesday 24 June 2020) with 63 pedelec bicycles. They are planning on rolling out up to 200 bicycles in their Islington trial operation, before hopefully expanding to central London later this summer with up to 1000 in their fleet. HumanForest’s technology platform and equipment provider […]
Continue reading »I earlier this week spoke at a Cycling@Tea-Time seminar, on the impact of lockdown on bikeshare, looking at London, the UK, and the world in general. The talk was based on some very preliminary crunching through some CDRC datasets to see how usage has changed, both in volume and time-of-day, for how people are using […]
Continue reading »I was invited by organiser Landor LINKS to the Walking and Cycling Conference which took place in Manchester last month. The conference included a good focus on bikeshare, and it was a good time for the UK-focused bikeshare industry to pause and take stock of a busy 2019. Three UK-focused bikeshare operators – Freebike, Beryl … Continue reading Walking & Cycling Innovations →
Continue reading »A bylaw is being drafted between the 32 London borough councils (and the City of London) to introduce a coordinated approach to managing dockless micromobility sharing, such as bikeshare and (should future national legislation permit it) escootershare, across London. Currently, each council sets its own policy with regards to dockless cycle operators in their area, … Continue reading Consolidating Dockless Cycles in London →
Continue reading »When running a fleet of dockless bikeshare bikes, one of the potentially most costly problems is theft of the bicycles. They aren’t attached to anything if they are dockless, even if they are in a marked “hub”, and, even if the bikes are typically heavier than a personal bike, they can still be easy targets … Continue reading Use vs Theft: Risks and Rewards for Dockless Bike Operations in London →
Continue reading »Mobility is a complex and important topic in geography, planning and technology. My research only touches on a small part of the field, namely automated micromobility services (aka micro-MaaS?) such as bikeshare and escootershare, so it’s always interesting to see a wider viewpoint. As such, I was interested when an acquaintance at HERE Mobility, an … Continue reading The State of Mobility: MaaS Consolidation on the Horizon? →
Continue reading »Two bicycle sharing systems have launched in London in the last fortnight, joining four systems already on the streets of central London and two more on the edge of the capital: Freebike launched a system based in the City, Islington, Hackney, Camden, Kensington, Chelsea and parts of Lambeth and Wandsworth along the river. Essentially, central … Continue reading Then There Were Eight →
Continue reading »The Guardian newspaper has published an online article about the rise and fall of dockless bikeshare, focusing on the pure dockless systems in England (there aren’t any in the rest of the UK) that grew in 2017, and then shrank last autumn. The article extensively used some of the geospatial boundary data that I have … Continue reading Dockless Bikeshare in London: Part 2 →
Continue reading »A puncture on my own bicycle on my way in to work this morning found me grinding to a halt outside Manor House station – not the worst place to have a flat tyre, as the tube from there will take me into work in around 20 minutes with just one change, for £2.40. (The … Continue reading Lime-E Bikeshare: London Test →
Continue reading »I recently presented at the CoMoUK Good Mobility Conference in East London, looking at the story of bikeshare in London over the last 12 months ago, touching a little on other systems in the UK. Here are my slides, slightly updated from the conference itself: While the core of the presentation was a timeline, numbers … Continue reading Bikeshare in London – The Last 12 Months →
Continue reading »Having travelled to both Milan and Singapore in the last few weeks, it’s worth a note on the bikeshare provisions there. Milan has BikeMi, a long-serving dock-based bikeshare system, which is one of the nearly 400 city systems that I have mapped in Bike Share map. It covers a big part of the city. There … Continue reading Bikeshare Snapshot – Milan and Singapore →
Continue reading »Dockless bikeshare has been out in London for around 10 months now (not withstanding the brief but spectacular oBike launch and burnout in mid 2016). It looks like the operators are getting serious and trying to get dockless bikeshare to pay for itself – starting a transition from a “growth” to “profit” focus: Mobike has … Continue reading Making Bikeshare Pay →
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My research lab, the Consumer Data Research Centre, is making available much of the docking station empty/full observation data that I have been collecting, at frequent intervals (up to every 2 minutes) for generally the last 5 to 8 years, for over 50 citeis around the world. I already get numerous requests for this data … Continue reading Bikeshare Docking Station Data Release →
Continue reading »Mobike, one of London’s four bikeshare operators (with Urbo, Ofo and Santander Cycles) as today expanded to Newham. The operators are being driven by different borough approaches and priorities, which is resulting in a patchwork quilt of operating areas, although the London Assembly is today pushing for a more London-wide approach to regulation of the … Continue reading Population Analysis of London Bikeshare Systems →
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The GLA published an interesting report last week: Future transport – How is London responding to technological innovation. It focused mainly on drones, driverless cars and app-based services (as an example, CityMapper’s experimenting on turning its huge desire-line dataset, created from the data of its millions of users and their journeys, into a group-based taxishare … Continue reading Future Transport Report and Dockless in London →
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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 … Continue reading Dockless Continues to Expand – Here’s the Data →
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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 … Continue reading Mobike coming to Brent? →
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Following Ofo’s recent expansion to Islington and the City of London, Mobike has today also expanded to Islington and the City – here’s a set of operator-placed bikes outside Cally Road tube station: This presumably means that you can now cycle from Acton in Ealing, the original London location for Mobike, to Islington, for 50p/half … Continue reading Three Bikeshare Systems now Competing Directly in London →
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Bikeshare system coverage in London, November 2017. Shading: Proportion of people who cycle to work. There are now five bikeshare systems operating in London: Santander Cycles (Central London) Photo: Copyright TfL. Santander Cycles are red, they launched in July 2010 and have around 9500 bikes on the street (12000 reported), covering an area of 110km … Continue reading Five Bikeshares in London →
Continue reading »I presented at the BikePlus Future of Bike Share Conference in Manchester in late September, as part of a panel session on social benefits of public Bike Share Data. I framed my presentation in the context of open data, whereby operators or technology providers of bikeshare systems, and/or municipalities containing them, release data on the … Continue reading Social Benefits from Public Bike Share Data →
Continue reading »London has a new bikeshare system – and it’s appeared by surprise, overnight. oBike is a dockless bikeshare. The company is based in Singapore, where it runs a number of large dockless systems there and in China, Australia and the Netherlands, it is also likely coming to Washington DC in the USA and to Berlin … Continue reading Dockless Bikeshare in London – oBike is Here →
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The above map shows the estimated routes and flows of over 16 million users of the bikeshare in Mexico City, “ECOBICI“, across the 22 months between February 2015 and November 2016, using data from their open data portal. The system has been around since 2011 but its most recent major expansion, to the south, was … Continue reading How Mexico City Does Bikeshare →
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Here’s an interesting graph, which combines data on total journeys per day on London’s bicycle sharing system (currently called “Santander Cycles”) from the London Data Store, with counts of available bicycles per day to hire, from my own research database. The system launched in summer 2010 and I started tracking the numbers almost from the … Continue reading London’s Bikeshare Needs A Redistribution of Stations →
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I’ll be gradually tweaking this article to add/amend sources, clarifications and develop some of my arguments. A big announcement for the “Boris Bikes” today, aka Barclays Cycle Hire. London’s bikeshare system, the second largest in the western world after Paris’s Velib and nearly five years old, will be rebranded as Santander Cycles, and the bikes … Continue reading Seeing Red: 15 Ways the Boris Bikes of London Could be Better →
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The above graphic (click for full version) shows 12.4 million bicycle journeys taken on the Barclays Cycle Hire system in London over seven months, from 13 December 2013, when the south-west expansion to Putney and Hammersmith went live, until 19 July 2014 – the latest journey data available from Transport for London’s Open Data portal. It’s an update of a […]
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I presented some research I’ve carried out at CASA, at the Cycle City conference in Leeds last week. The research shows how the numbers of bikeshare bikes and docking stations have varied between 2010 and 2014, for 46 systems across the world (not all systems have numbers for whole period of study). The numbers are […]
Continue reading »I presented some research I’ve carried out at CASA, at the Cycle City conference in Leeds last week. The research shows how the numbers of bikeshare bikes and docking stations have varied between 2010 and 2014, for 46 systems across the world (not all systems have numbers for whole period of study). The numbers are […]
Continue reading »
I presented some research I’ve carried out at CASA, at the Cycle City conference in Leeds last week. The research shows how the numbers of bikeshare bikes and docking stations have varied between 2010 and 2014, for 46 systems across the world (not all systems have numbers for whole period of study). The numbers are […]
Continue reading »
[Updated – timeperiod-split maps added] Following on from my London bikeshare journeys graphic, here is the same technique applied with the data released by NYC Bike Share (aka Citi Bike) earlier this week. If you look carefully at the full size map you can see a thin line heading north-eastwards, initially well out of the […]
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[Updated – timeperiod-split maps added] Following on from my London bikeshare journeys graphic, here is the same technique applied with the data released by NYC Bike Share (aka Citi Bike) earlier this week. If you look carefully at the full size map you can see a thin line heading north-eastwards, initially well out of the […]
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I produced this data map which forms the front cover of this week’s British Medical Journal (BMJ). The graphic shows the volumes of Barclays Cycle Hire bikeshare users in London, based on journeys from February 2012 to January 2013 inclusive. The routes are the most likely routes between each pair of stations, as calculated using […]
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I produced this data map which forms the front cover of this week’s British Medical Journal (BMJ). The graphic shows the volumes of Barclays Cycle Hire bikeshare users in London, based on journeys from February 2012 to January 2013 inclusive. The routes are the most likely routes between each pair of stations, as calculated using […]
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NYC Citibike’s meteoric rise continues – for October, the New York City bikeshare beat London’s Barclays Cycle Hire on average journeys per day, for both weekdays and weekends. Even more impressive considering that it’s only just over half the size. Thanks to this release published today at the London Data Store, and this daily updating […]
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NYC Citibike’s meteoric rise continues – for October, the New York City bikeshare beat London’s Barclays Cycle Hire on average journeys per day, for both weekdays and weekends. Even more impressive considering that it’s only just over half the size. Thanks to this release published today at the London Data Store, and this daily updating […]
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