More tourists than locals use Boris Bikes as scheme grows

More Boris Bikes have been hired by tourists than by Londoners for the first time.

The Easter weekend saw numbers of "casual" users - who access hire cycles by swiping a credit card - overtake subscribers on every day of the four-day break.

Transport for London says the shift in demand was expected after it widened the scheme in December to include foreign and domestic visitors.

Only 257 bikes were hired when casual use began on December 3, because of a computer crash and wintry conditions but this has gradually increased.

On Good Friday, April 22, the number of casual hires (13,475) passed registered users (10,244) for the first time. The next three days saw a similar pattern: 11,103 casual hires against 8,079 subscribers on the Saturday; 14,168 to 7,145 on Sunday and 13,032 to 8,637 on Easter Monday.

A TfL spokeswoman said: "We find that the busiest docking stations are around Hyde Park, where people can hire a bike and tour the park."

Leon Daniels, TfL's managing director of surface transport, said in a report: "Rising temperatures and dry weather in April encouraged an increase in hires, especially by casual users, who made over 65,000 journeys in the week from April 18 to April 24 alone."

More than four million bike trips have been made since the £140 million scheme was launched last July, including about 400,000 by casual users. But TfL is still struggling to achieve the promised 30,000 journeys a day.

Nearly 119,000 people have taken out membership - paying up to £48 a year for a key fob that releases a bike. Casual users pay £1 a day, or £5 a week, to access the scheme.

All users incur further charges if a bike is hired for longer than 30 minutes at a time. There are now 400 docking stations and work is "progressing well" with the scheme's expansion eastwards to Canary Wharf and the edge of the Olympics Park in Stratford by next summer.

Nine sites, containing 500 docking points, have been identified and planning permission will be sought this month.