So here in London, Boris Johnson has announced he’s going to create a cycle scheme along the lines of the Velib in Paris. He may look like Worzel Gummidge’s mad cousin, but I 
suspect he’s a very smart cookie. Good on him.
Now, if this scheme were to take off, then potentially less buses or tube trains would be needed (as if there are enough already! – ed), and this could have a beneficial impact on the carbon footprint of London. So what’s might that be?
Well, 6,000 cycles are going to be used in zone 1, so let’s assume that roughly:
- 25% replace tube journeys* @ 65.0 g/km
- 25% replace bus journeys* @ 81.8 g/km
- 25% replace cab journeys @ 172 g/km
- 25% replace walking journeys @ 0 g/km
So, assuming cycling is carbon neutral, that’s an average of 79.7 g/km improvement for every passenger km.
Assuming that any bike in use is averaging 5km / hr through central London, and that at any one point averaged throughout the day (more during the day and less at night of course), 30% of the cycles are in use. Then we can assume that at any point then we can assume that 1800 of them are being crashed by lost tourists, and 9000 km being cycled every hour. Over a day that’s 216,000 km pedalled, or 17.2 tonnes of carbon offset every day. That’s pretty good Boris.
However, does anyone else have a sneaking suspicion that the majority of Boris’s bikes will disappear by the truckload and end up in Albania ?
