Transport for London is in search of a designer and supplier to introduce a “new generation” of bicycles to the city’s public employ network.
The contract for the provide of London’s public bicycles is due to expire in 2017, but Transport for London (TfL) has currently place out a get in touch with for a new organization to get duty for developing, building, testing and supplying the up coming generation of bikes until 2027.
According to a public tender document issued by TfL, the new organization will also consider over managing and sustaining the current fleet of bicycles.
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Because the scheme’s launch in 2010, the city’s 10,000 bicycles have been supplied by Canadian bicycle producer Cycles Devinci.
All of the city’s recent models were built in rural Canada and are primarily based on the Bixi bike, initially produced by industrial designer Michael Dallaire. New York also deployed a variation on this style in its Citi Bike scheme.
London’s public bicycles – nicknamed Boris Bikes after the city’s mayor, Boris Johnson, who was in power when the scheme launched – are renowned for their sturdiness: weighing 23 kilograms and made to final up to 64,000 kilometres.
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The layout features a three-pace hub gear, puncture-proof tyres, dynamo-powered LED lights and an RFID tag that communicates with the city’s docking stations to preserve track of how prolonged every single bike has been in use.
The bike-sharing scheme won the transport category in the Brit Insurance Design Awards in 2011. It was originally sponsored by British bank Barclays, which leant its trademark light blue colour to the branding.
Spanish-owned financial institution Santander took over the contract in 2015, so the blue was swapped for red as element of its seven-12 months deal.
As cycling has turn into far more popular in London, several suggestions have been floated to improve street security. Norman Foster unveiled a concept to create a network of elevated pathways over London’s railways to produce protected automobile-free cycling routes, although Gensler wants to repurpose the United kingdom capital’s abandoned tube tunnels to produce a subterranean network of pathways.
A lot of cities about the planet now have similar bike-sharing schemes in place – including New York, which launched its model in 2013.
