I’ve been giving the Boris Bikes a go over the past day or so. It’s been 15 years since I last cycled in London, so I found the whole thing quite daunting at first. But I’m really getting into it now and have even signed up for cycle training from my local council. One problem that I’ve come across, though, is the distribution of bikes across the hire zone. In the mornings, the racks at the edge of the zone are empty, whilst those in the centre of the zone are full so you have to ride around a few before finding somewhere to drop the bike off. The answer to this problem - which plagues the Paris scheme too - could be open data. Since the start of the hire scheme an army of coders, designers and  geeks have been using the data published by TFL to see how people are using the scheme. TFL’s data feed - of numbers of bikes available at each location - has in a few short days produced a wealth of mashups, apps and visualisations. This map, from Oliver O’Brien, is one of my favourites, showing both data from individual docking stations, and broader patterns of inner/outer zone usage.

I’ve been giving the Boris Bikes a go over the past day or so. It’s been 15 years since I last cycled in London, so I found the whole thing quite daunting at first. But I’m really getting into it now and have even signed up for cycle training from my local council.

One problem that I’ve come across, though, is the distribution of bikes across the hire zone. In the mornings, the racks at the edge of the zone are empty, whilst those in the centre of the zone are full so you have to ride around a few before finding somewhere to drop the bike off.

The answer to this problem - which plagues the Paris scheme too - could be open data. Since the start of the hire scheme an army of coders, designers and  geeks have been using the data published by TFL to see how people are using the scheme.

TFL’s data feed - of numbers of bikes available at each location - has in a few short days produced a wealth of mashups, apps and visualisations.

This map, from Oliver O’Brien, is one of my favourites, showing both data from individual docking stations, and broader patterns of inner/outer zone usage.