Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park To Get Cycle Hire

BethPH
By BethPH Last edited 112 months ago
Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park To Get Cycle Hire

Photo by Dan Eayres via the Londonist Flickr pool.

The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park will get eight new docking stations for the cycle hire scheme, says Transport for London (TfL). It is the first time the park will have the bicycles.

The stations — enough space for 320 bikes — will be located at the Orbit tower, the London Aquatics Centre, Lee Valley Velopark and Hackney Wick Station. The idea is apparently to encourage visitors to nearby Waltham Forest's upcoming mini-Holland (itself something of a controversy locally) as well as one of the proposed Quietways between Aldgate and Hainault. The work will begin in 2015, subject to planning permission.

The new docking stations have come rather late in the day for the Olympic Park — we speculated last year on the piecemeal expansion of the scheme. The reason the Olympic Park missed out before was down to a clash of sponsors, with Barclays part-funding the cycle hire while rivals Lloyds TSB partnered the Games.

Funding for the Olympic Park stations will come from the Mayor's £913m Cycling Vision budget, but any future expansion could see developers being asked to contribute under section 106. Meanwhile, Barclays' successor as sponsor is yet to be determined, but we suspect the Mayor and TfL might have learned something from the previous deal and come up with a new one which doesn't involve quite as big a chunk of taxpayers' dosh.

The cycle hire scheme now has 10,000 bikes at over 700 docking stations. Proposed new locations include Putney Pier, Vauxhall and Tower Bridge.

Photo by Mark Cornick in the Londonist Flickr pool.

Last Updated 11 November 2014