It’s official, July marked the month that London became a member of the worlds cycle cities, following Paris last year .

Opened by the Mayor of London earlier today , Transport for London (TFL) admitted to the online community london that it was expecting some “teething problems” and perhaps this is borne out by having over 12,000 members and only 5000 bikes available!

Boris Said “Londoners have awoken to a new dawn for the bicycle in the capital. Overnight racks have been filled with thousands of gleaming machines that will transform the look and feel of our streets and become as commonplace on our roads as black cabs and red buses.”

Londons crusade for the capital to become the greatest big cycling city in the world has taken a gigantic pedal-powered push forwards.”

London Going Out tested the bikes themselves and they are ….well, they aren’t exactly Anglina Jolie . Health and safety rules the roost in London these days and they were obviously the driving force with these designs .

It costs £3 to unlock the bike and then £1 and hour . As I understand it, if the bike is returned to a parking station within 30 mins then the only cost is for the key.

At the moment there are docking stations located in Camden, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Southwark, Islington, Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea, Lambeth as well as some of the Royal Parks.

Still, I think it’s a great idea and I am all for it London was never designed for the car being such an ancient city.

It could do with linking up to the Oyster service & have some tracking chip (I presume that it doesn’t at the moment) and I can see it being an opportunity for fly posters (anti-war protesters have already had their fun)….. but it has got to be a good thing to encourage people away from overcrowed roads and tube lines onto an under utilised, healthy and fun way to travel.

It will be interesting to see how many bikes will disappear and what state the ones that are left will be in?