Boris bikes will be removed for Notting Hill carnival
Four bicycle hire docking stations in Notting Hill are being suspended and all 79 bikes removed for the duration of the carnival for "crime management purposes".
The Boris bikes, each costing about £350, will be taken away on Saturday night and not replaced until Tuesday. The stations closest to the parade route, in Westbourne Grove, Pembridge Road, Chepstow Villas and Pembridge
Gardens, will be fenced off.
Transport for London said it had decided to remove the bikes after a request from Kensington and Chelsea council. A council spokeswoman said: "We asked the police if they needed to be removed for crowd management purposes and they said yes. So many people are in the road, people probably wouldn't have been able to use them anyway."
The carnival can attract up to a million people over the weekend, with many roads closed to vehicles. Many residents in and around Ladbroke Grove barricade their homes to prevent vandalism and looting.
The numbers attracted to the carnival is also a factor in TfL and its contractor Serco delaying until mid-September a roll-out of the £140 million scheme that will allow bikes to be hired by tourists and non-registered users.
TfL said it still hoped visitors would use the hire bikes to travel to and from the carnival. Cycles can be docked and hired from stations near Kensington Church Street and the eastern end of Westbourne Grove.
Police today praised Londoners for looking after the bikes, with only two reported stolen in the scheme's first four weeks.
One was recovered from a garden in Bethnal Green after being spotted by a passer-by. The bike had been loaned by TfL to a company in Canary Wharf when it was stolen. The other bike was stolen in Islington. A man was arrested but the bike's whereabouts remain unknown.
Sgt Titus Halliwell, of the Met's TfL-funded cycle taskforce, said the theft statistics for Boris bikes compared very favourably with the 23,748 "normal" bikes stolen in London in the last 12 months.
