It’s all go for cyclists in London at the moment, what with the first two cycle superhighways opened for business, and a total of 12 intended to be fully operational by the end of 2015 and the London Bike hire scheme due to open next week.

It seems that Boris Johnson is pulling out all the stops to make London a more cycle friendly place, hopeful that “London will acquire an ever greater reputation as the best big city on earth to live in.”

Both schemes have been funded by Barclays at a reported cost of £25m, and the idea with the superhighways is that it provides a designated cycle route that connects various boroughs in London, without battling for the road with cars, buses and lorries. However, not everyone sees it quite like that. Cyclist Rob Ainsley felt that nothing had particularly changed saying “It’s just blue paint on the road.”

It’ll be interesting to see how the cycle hire scheme will pan out. It’s been a ravenous success in Paris, which Parisians effectionately refer to as ‘Velib’, a catchy conglomeration of velo (bike) and liberte (freedom). With each of the 6,000 proposed bikes in London, plastered with the Barclays logo, it’s difficult to see that the slightly less snappy ’Barclays Cycle Hire scheme’ will be quite so taken to people’s hearts. Never-the-less, we feel quite confident, that before long some kind of snazzy moniker will be universally adopted.

The first month will see the bikes only available to pre-registered members, with every other Tom, Dick and Harry being able to get their hands on them at the end of August. It would seem that this drip feed introductory period is to allow the organisers of the scheme to spot and iron out any problems before getting in too deep. The pricing structure also encourages shorter journeys with the first half hour being free, £1 for an hour, £6 for two hours and £35 for 6 hours. It would seem that the idea is that the bikes are intended to replace shortish cab journeys and tube journeys of 2 or 3 stops, although, unlike the Velib scheme, the London bikes don’t come with either a basket or a lock. The basket isn’t quite so necessary, but the lack of lock (unless you get your own) will mean that you’re limited to cycling from one docking station to another. If you do however risk nipping into a shop and the bike disappears, then you’ll find that Boris will take £300 out of your bank account (bank details are provided as a deposit) by way of compensation.

Anyway, these are exciting cycling times and MB looks forward to seeing how integrated and accepted into daily London life both of these schemes become.