I went to a nearest dock, which the app claimed to be in perfectly fine order, and tried to get a bike. Error. Tried a few more times just in case, still error. I thought that's just app error, so I tried to use the terminal instead - which is really painful as it involves clicking same stupid confirmation dialogs about 25 times before it lets you rent the damn bike - but it was just as broken as the app.
Could the app somehow mark the dock as not working? Right...
So I walked to the next dock, that somehow wasn't broken, so I got a bike, cycled to Aldgate, and from there to the end of pompously named "Cycle Superhighway 2" at Stratford.
Stratford is a traffic hell, with no docks near the "Cycle Superhighway 2" or the station. The app claimed the nearest two docks had zero spaces left.
There was one about 10 minutes away from the station which claimed to have 4 free spaces. I went there - wasting tons of time going in circles because direct route is not possible anywhere near Stratford - and there was only one space, which didn't take the bike in spite of repeated attempts, for whichever reason. First it flashed red, then it just gave up.
After a lot of loud cursing, I had to cycle to the next dock, which fortunately somehow had free spaces, probably because it was really damn far from the station.
The cycling itself was fine, just everything else about the experience was totally miserable, and of course they charged me extra for wasting my time due to broken docking stations.
Which is pretty much what I learned to expect from the TfL. Unionized 💩💩💩.
I really hope some competition with dockless bikes comes to London. Right now none of these new schemes allow realistic commuting between Central London and zones 2/3, but there's some hope for the future.
Hello mate ggreat blog
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