Bike hire: Not a member? Come back later then

At the launch of the first cycle superhighways today and an extremely interesting revelation about the cycle hire scheme which is meant to launch on July 30th.

For the first four weeks you have to be a pre-registered user to use the bikes.

That means you have to sign up from Friday July 23rd at www.tfl.gov.uk/barclayscyclehire and get sent a key.

That will cost you £3 and you'll have to load on your subscription of either one day (£1), a week (£5) or a year (£45).

Now that will not go down well with those casual users who wanted to use their credit cars and get on the hire bikes from the first day.

Transport for London say they never ruled out this kind of "soft" start but senior people at TfL tell me the expectation was for a fully "open" system from the start. But I think there is now an understanding that technically this might be the easier way to do it.

There is some teeth gnashing about how Serco the contractor have handled it and some concerns about the scheme although I'm assured the bikes will be ready on time.

We shall see.

Will this make a difference to you?

The bottom line is if you want to use them from the launch date you will have to register...

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