BORIS JOHNSON’S prediction that “lots of things will go wrong” with the new bike hire scheme came true Friday morning when about a quarter of both the promised bikes and their docking stations weren’t ready in time.
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There were meant to be 6,000 bikes on tap, but at least 1,300 were missing and nearly 100 of the 400 docking points weren’t fit for purpose.
On top of that, some early adopters of the Mayor’s newest additions to London’s transport network complained that the brakes were faulty.
Nevertheless, the majority of those Twittering and blogging their experiences of the new bikes gave them the thumbs up, if not in quite the epoch-making terms used by Johnson.
“Londoners have awoken to a new dawn for the bicycle in the capital,” said the Mayor.
“My crusade for the capital to become the greatest big cycling city in the world has taken a gigantic pedal-powered push forwards.”
Perhaps anticipating the teething troubles, Transport for London have employed helpers at some of the docking sites and there is plenty of info on all things bike hire over at the TfL website.
