At the foot of Big Ben, thousands of cyclists fizz through the morning air on London’s riverside cycle path. Their bikes, a blur of black, blue and piercing lime green, carry a peloton of commuters, the scale of which the city has rarely seen. Many of those out riding, on any other day, would otherwise be sat in a stuffy Tube carriage. This week, strikes have forced them above ground.
Bike providers such as Lime, Forest and Transport for London (TfL) have all recorded a significant increase in usage this week, as London’s ‘strikelysts’ respond to the disrupted Underground network. Called by the RMT union, the action began on Monday, with demands relating to pay and working conditions.
On the first day of the strike, Forest, a dockless e-bike provider with around 15,000 bikes in London, recorded a 300% increase in rides during the morning rush hour (7am-8am). This coincided with 20,000 downloads of the company’s app – ten times the usual amount – and a widespread hope that new users will stick around after the strikes are due to end on Friday.
“Moments like these only reinforce just how vital shared bikes have become in keeping the city moving,” a spokesperson from Lime told Cycling Weekly.
The scramble for Lime’s green-forked fleet, estimated to be 25,000-30,000 strong in London, has been one of the lasting images of this week’s strikes.
The company witnessed a 74% increase in journeys taken in the peak commuting hours of Wednesday (7am-11am), compared to the same period the previous week. What’s more, the spokesperson added, the journeys were longer in both distance and duration, “indicating that many riders relied on Lime for their entire commute rather than just the first or last mile”.
Anticipating this demand, Lime bolstered its operations across the city. “Our driver team has been on standby to keep vehicles in service, whether through fresh batteries or rebalancing overcrowded bays, and we are continuing to increase foot patrols in central London to keep high-demand areas clear,” the company’s spokesperson said.
TfL’s Santander Cycles service, too, has enjoyed an uptick. In statistics shared with Cycling Weekly, TfL said it recorded 45,898 bike hires on Tuesday, 72% higher than the same day the previous week, when there were 26,678.
“It’s great that lots of people are cycling,” Simon Munk of London’s Cycling Campaign told Metro. Still, Munk added, the increased number of bikes on the roads has “exposed the lack of capacity for cycling in London”.
“The routes that we do have were over capacity even before the strikes,” Munk explained. “If you cycle on the Embankment on an average day there are queues and cyclists overtaking each other because it is too overcrowded.”
London’s Tube strikes are expected to end on Friday morning. RMT has warned there will be further industrial action in the future if demands, or compromises, are not met.
