One of our hire bikes is missing...

Just been told that a man's been arrested for stealing one of the capital's hire bikes. According to Transport for London he was caught on CCTV and the bike's still missing.

Tfl says it's the first recorded theft of one of the hire bikes - and so far there have been just two reports of vandalism.

The latest statistics for the Bike Hire scheme certainly show the schemes popularity. There have been 70,000 journeys as of 0800 today. And there are 31,000 members.

The breakdown of the members shows that the daily access fee is the most popular with 16,164 signed up - most using the auto top up facility. 13,775 are annual members with just 1,868 weekly members (myself included).

There are still problems though.

I tried to change my membership type from weekly to the daily type by calling the contractor Serco on the call centre number.

I called at 2pm and they said they'd call me back. No call back yet and it's now six o'clock. I did however get a T-shirt.

Having read and watched much of the coverage of the Bike Hire scheme my feeling it was debatably the largest advert for everyday cycling there has ever been in this country.

Olympians Sir Chris Hoy and Bradley Wiggins might disagree.

I'd have thought, Barclays the sponsors must think it's £25 million well spent (so far).

Also there isn't yet a date for the full roll out. And that will be another real test of Serco's systems.

UPDATE: Wednesday 11, August, 1230

Congratulations to the real cycling blog.

They posted a photo of a hire bike that had been suspiciously left in a canalside garden in north London. This was spotted by the Met who then managed to track down the thief!

Let me know your hire bike problems, pleasures and opinions...

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