On a rare recent visit to London, I thought I’d try the “Boris bikes” – or Barclays Cycle Hire to give it its proper name (and Barclays have presumably stumped up lots of money, so we ought to).

As a casual user, I paid a couple of pounds for my bike ride – using my debit card to pay on location. Getting the bike out was a bit fiddly – doubtless I’d get the knack if I did it a couple more times. The bikes themselves are perfectly decent: solid 3-gear bicycles with no crossbar, a wider women’s saddle and chain cover to keep oil of my trousers. The saddle height’s easily adjustable and there are lots of bikes around.

I’ve not cycled in London for a few years, and it was good fun – although I did get trapped in one-way streets a couple of times, it was fine. With lots of wider roads, it can seem a little scary but central London traffic seems to move so slowly (below walking speed for most of the time, it seemed to me) that it was probably pretty safe.

As an occasional visitor, I was a little concerned that I didn’t know where the docking stations were, which is a slight concern. As it turned out, there are enough that it wasn’t a problem. One issue that does seem to have been raised is returning bikes: they have to go back into a docking station. If the docking station at your destination is full, you just need to go to another (you can get an extra 15 minutes to do it) but that doesn’t help if you’re running late for a meeting.

On the warm, sunny day I was in London, there were quite a lot of cyclists around (certainly more than I remember from 20 years ago when I cycled in London regularly). A significant minority were on Boris bikes, but it was impossible to judge what the take-up was and whether the scheme was meeting its revenue targets.

So, could it work in Greater Manchester?

I’m not convinced. The sheer numbers of people moving around central London, crammed into a small area, combined with jammed roads give the scheme at least a fighting chance there.

Towns like Stockport, Oldham and Bury are – compared to central London – much smaller, with a much lower footfall, less traffic and – perhaps importantly – a lot hillier. My journey in London would have taken about an hour to walk (and a perfectly pleasant walk it is, on a sunny day). I can walk across Stockport town centre much faster.

Central Manchester is both flatter and busier of course, and there might be scope for a scaled-down scheme to work there, but I’ve a suspicion that even there the numbers wouldn’t add up.

For the scheme to be viable it would need a decent number of bikes and docking stations – it has to be convenient and meet a need.

Across Greater Manchester, we’re getting £5m funding to build facilities for cyclists – secure parking, lockers and, in some cases, showers and changing rooms too. That meets an important need, and gets over a barrier to many people cycling to work. It may well be that – for us – that sort of project does a lot more to get people cycling and help people move around the area than a Boris bikes-style scheme would achieve.

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