August 29th - London's bike wars
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
London bike wars: the cycles you can pick up here, and leave there. In the green corner, Anthony Smith, transport supremo, is championing the Lime electric bikes that are allowed to roam free (as are the people who hire them, within limits). In the red (and grey) corner, I am a true believer in Santander Cycles.
This episode is free, much like the Independent travel newsletter. Subscribe now.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Thursday the 29th of August. |
| 0:08.9 | I have the great pleasure of being with very good friend Anthony Smith. You probably know him as the former chief executive of Transport Focus. |
| 0:18.1 | He's now the chair of independent rail retailers and also of the Heathrow |
| 0:23.8 | Area Transport Forum. We're sitting by the beautiful canal outside Paddington Station, so a good |
| 0:30.6 | transport location. I've arrived on a Santander cycle. Possibly you will know these better as Boris bikes and they are these red |
| 0:40.7 | and grey bikes that you will often see around London and they live in little stables where you |
| 0:45.8 | can lock and unlock them. But Anthony, it turns out, is not a great fan of these. He is a fan of |
| 0:53.7 | Lime Bikes and I'm therefore going to ask Anthony to set out why he likes lime bikes and why he doesn't like Santander cycles and then we're going to have I suspect a bit of an argument. |
| 1:06.9 | Simon, hi. I've lived in London for 40 years and I've been cycling around London for 40 years |
| 1:12.5 | and I have never once hired a Boris bike in my whole time living in London. |
| 1:17.8 | There's two very good reasons for that, one of which is very practical. |
| 1:21.2 | Where I live in South West London, Boris bikes have not reached there yet and so for journeys in and around home, |
| 1:27.4 | line bikes and their rivals are the only alternative |
| 1:30.7 | and they're very useful for those sort of last mile journeys. |
| 1:33.9 | And secondly, in central London, |
| 1:35.7 | I tend to either walk or it's just a bit of a hassle. |
| 1:39.6 | You know, you've got to find a dock where you've got an available bike. |
| 1:42.9 | And then worst of all, when you finish your journey, you've got to find a dock that's've got an available bike and then worst of all you've got when you when you |
| 1:44.9 | finish your journey you've got to find a dock that's got an available space and i have docking |
| 1:50.0 | fear simon i've really scared of being lumber with a bike which i can't dock now i've had this experience |
| 1:56.3 | with line bikes because you can sometimes you can only park them in certain places and then you're stuck |
| 2:01.9 | with a bike which is clock which is the meter is running on it and you can't park the thing and I had |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Independent, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Independent and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.