Going the distance: the ‘Boris bikes’ being spotted around the world
They have been a feature of London’s streets for nearly 12 years: the docked public bikes for sharing that are billed as one of the easiest and quickest ways for people to make shorter journeys. Or in some cases, it seems, considerably longer ones.
Among the hundreds of bikes that go permanently missing from the 14,000-plus fleet every year, a handful have been tracked down to distinctly non-London locations, including Australia, the Gambia and Turkey, a freedom of information request has disclosed.
Other foreign locations in which the bikes have been officially spotted are Jamaica, Romania and the Republic of Ireland.
According to the FoI response from Transport for London (TfL), which operates the Santander Cycles scheme, the rogue Irish bike was recovered with the help of garda officers, while the British Transport Police has helped to bring back models from Cornwall, Southend-on-Sea and Brighton. There was no news about the fate of the others.
TfL is reluctant to discuss the theft of what many still refer to as “Boris bikes” after the London mayor in office at the time they were introduced, even though the scheme originated from Boris Johnson’s predecessor, Ken Livingstone.
While the London hire scheme is seen as a huge success, recording its 100 millionth journey just over a year ago, the number of bikes lost permanently is gradually rising, albeit from a total number that has more than doubled since it was launched.
In 2013, the first year records are available, 108 bikes went missing – this rose to 950 bikes in 2020 and 851 in the first seven months of last year.
TfL declined to give further details about the particularly exotic places in which some bikes were found, beyond to say that they were identified through a
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