Bike Revolution in the UK?

LONDON, UK – Reports keep coming in on the booming bike market in the UK. In its mid year financial statement Accell Group named the United Kingdom as one of the countries where ‘sales of bicycles significantly increased in the first half of 2010.’ This Friday the country will take another big step in its ‘bike revolution’.’

On July 30 London mayor Boris Johnson is to unveil the ‘Barclays Cycle Hire scheme’. Transport for London (TfL), which is behind the scheme, will have 6,000 bikes available for rent. Over the past few weeks about 400 new docking stations have been appearing across central London.

According to a report in ‘The Guardian’, the London scheme is modelled on the Bixi project that has become a big success in the Canadian city of Montreal, and even uses similar bikes. “Once you've paid a GBP 1 (€ 1.19) a day access charge, the first half an hour's rental is free, and you can make as many 30-minute trips in the day as you like without paying a penny more,” says this report.

With an eye on the growing popularity of cycling in the UK, the countries’ supermarket chain Tesco recently opened ‘Bike Shops’ in 8 of its 450 stores across the nation. Despite the fact that sales doubles here in the fist half of the year, according to a Tesco spokesman; there are no plans to further expand the number of Tesco Bike Shops.