Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => On The Road => Topic started by: telstarbox on 19 September, 2019, 11:45:56 am
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I've seen a web advert for this - essentially car-style leasing but with a bike.
https://buzzbike.cc
You pay £30/month which includes the bike (steel, 3-speed hub or single speed), a lock, accident/theft insurance and 1 mobile service per year. Can see it being popular as people pay more than that for their gym membership here and they point out that it's more flexible than the Cycle to Work scheme.
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Avoiding the up-front cost would appear to be the thing...
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It's hard to imagine there's a huge cohort of people in London who are keen enough on cycling to actually do it, but not already have their own bike.
Actually, it's quite easy to *imagine* there are lots of such people. Getting a sustainable number of them to sign up to your service is the hard bit.
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I'm sure there are regular Boris Bike users, some of whom might see this as a better deal (or at least a better, more available bike).
But a Boris Bike has the significant advantage that you don't have to have somewhere to keep it.
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There's a very uneven distribution of
Boris Bikes Santander Cycles because the docking stations have to be part-funded by the boroughs - so somewhere as inner London as Burgess Park or Rotherhithe peninsula don't have any.
ETA https://www.london.gov.uk/questions/2015/3269
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I can understand the appeal in some circumstances - the 'dockless' and santander bikes are really grim to ride (and also they don't come out far enough to let them be a door-to-door option for me). I have enough room where I live to have a town bike and 'Sunday best' but if you lived in more cramped conditions and especially if you couldn't keep a nice bike indoors I think I would weigh it up as an option. Especially if you also got work to reimburse your membership as a travel expense.
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Looks very similar to the swapfiets concept we have here.
You either pay €16 for a bike with no useful brakes, single speed, with integrated lock, front rack, and dyno lights.
or you pay €19 for a bike with a 7 Speed Nexus hub, 1 useful brake, integrated lock, front rack, and dyno lights. Bike breaks? Call them, they come and swap it for a functioning bike. Bike gets stolen? Hand them the key to the old one, they give you a new one. Cycle as a Service.
They are really popular, seen with their distinctive blue front tyre. Given that for many people their city bike is a pile of rusty shit, this provides them a way of having a half decent, well maintained bike that they don't have to worry too much if they lock it up at Centraal Station. I believe there is now a waiting list for them (Students just returned to uni...) Only slight issue is coming out of AH, and trying to work out which of the dozen or so Swapfiets outside is yours...
As a non swap fiets user, they also have the useful feature of a frame number sticker on the frame. So when some klootzak locks their swapfiets up such that it blocks the pavement, you can just email them, and swapfiets come collect it for you...
I'd say that in London, that a) £30 is too high, b) 3 speed isn't enough. But could work.
J
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There are two people at work who are doing this and both of them love it. One of them is gearing up to do the Shoreham FNRttC on it next month.
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For both of them it's significantly cheaper than public transport, and certainly for one of them it's much quicker than public transport. Bike ownership without the hassle. I can see why it's attractive to a particular group of people, and that group is (if they thought about it) really quite large I think, at least in London.
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3-speed's fine if you're not venturing beyond about *handwaves* Zone 3.
*ponders*
I've just realised the TFL zones in fact denote the optimum number of gears you need on a bike in that area. That's genius. It also explains why Bromptons come with up to 6 gears as standard (with those living in the further reaches of the Metropolitan line requiring a visit to Kinetics), and why areas where serious gearing is needed (Wales, Yorkshire, The Alps) don't recognise your Oyster card.
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For comparison it costs about £160 a month for a Zones 1-3 Travelcard, so if it's even a partial replacement for that ...
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There are two people at work who are doing this and both of them love it. One of them is gearing up to do the Shoreham FNRttC on it next month.
Gearing up to do you he FNRttC on a buzz bike? The website says, in one place, they're single speed and, in another,single or three speed. Is it one of the riders you brought on thd Brighton ride?
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For comparison it costs about £160 a month for a Zones 1-3 Travelcard, so if it's even a partial replacement for that ...
And this is where the lack of up-front cost is a winner. You could switch to this, pocket the savings and buy your own bike after a year or two.
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3-speed's fine if you're not venturing beyond about *handwaves* Zone 3.
*ponders*
I've just realised the TFL zones in fact denote the optimum number of gears you need on a bike in that area. That's genius. It also explains why Bromptons come with up to 6 gears as standard (with those living in the further reaches of the Metropolitan line requiring a visit to Kinetics), and why areas where serious gearing is need (Wales, Yorkshire, The Alps) don't recognise your Oyster card.
Brilliant !!
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There are two people at work who are doing this and both of them love it. One of them is gearing up to do the Shoreham FNRttC on it next month.
Gearing up to do you he FNRttC on a buzz bike? The website says, in one place, they're single speed and, in another,single or three speed. Is it one of the riders you brought on thd Brighton ride?
No, not one of the four on the Brighton ride, but yet another one. And he has a three speed Buzzbike.
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For comparison it costs about £160 a month for a Zones 1-3 Travelcard, so if it's even a partial replacement for that ...
Exactly ! No brainer.
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3-speed's fine if you're not venturing beyond about *handwaves* Zone 3.
*ponders*
I've just realised the TFL zones in fact denote the optimum number of gears you need on a bike in that area. That's genius. It also explains why Bromptons come with up to 6 gears as standard (with those living in the further reaches of the Metropolitan line requiring a visit to Kinetics), and why areas where serious gearing is needed (Wales, Yorkshire, The Alps) don't recognise your Oyster card.
Hmm, I live in zone 6 and I have – ta da! – a six-speed Brompton.
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3-speed's fine if you're not venturing beyond about *handwaves* Zone 3.
*ponders*
I've just realised the TFL zones in fact denote the optimum number of gears you need on a bike in that area. That's genius. It also explains why Bromptons come with up to 6 gears as standard (with those living in the further reaches of the Metropolitan line requiring a visit to Kinetics), and why areas where serious gearing is needed (Wales, Yorkshire, The Alps) don't recognise your Oyster card.
Hmm, I live in zone 6 and I have – ta da! – a six-speed Brompton.
...and I live in Middle Earth and have a 16-speed Brompton.
There we go, SCIENCE!
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...and I live in Middle Earth and have a 16-speed Brompton.
There we go, SCIENCE!
I'm in Amsterdam with a *checks notes* 14 speed Brompton...
Technically it's a 16 speed, but 4th gear on the hub is so rough I never use it and just skip between 3 and 5...
J
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I have to cycle up a 25% hill on it too. I need negative gears.
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I have to cycle up a 25% hill on it too. I need negative gears.
A friend is trying to persuade me to take the mudguards off mine and go do the local Cyclocross event on it...
Main thing stopping me right now is the faff of taking the guards on and off...
J
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Has anyone floated Bromtocross to Brompton yet?
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I live in zone 2 and have a 12 speed Brompton. This may upset the dataset.
My avatar is me doing an actual cyclocross race on mine*. With the mudguards on. And not for the first time. In sticky conditions the chain tensioner clogs long before the mudguards do.
(* on a motocross course in zone 8)
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There are two people at work who are doing this and both of them love it. One of them is gearing up to do the Shoreham FNRttC on it next month.
Gearing up to do you he FNRttC on a buzz bike? The website says, in one place, they're single speed and, in another,single or three speed. Is it one of the riders you brought on thd Brighton ride?
No, not one of the four on the Brighton ride, but yet another one. And he has a three speed Buzzbike.
Looks like I'm on that ride. See you (and your ourquers de vache) there.
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There are two people at work who are doing this and both of them love it. One of them is gearing up to do the Shoreham FNRttC on it next month.
Gearing up to do you he FNRttC on a buzz bike? The website says, in one place, they're single speed and, in another,single or three speed. Is it one of the riders you brought on thd Brighton ride?
No, not one of the four on the Brighton ride, but yet another one. And he has a three speed Buzzbike.
Looks like I'm on that ride. See you (and your ourquers de vache) there.
Excellent !
(Ourquers ?? Wassat ?)
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Looks like I'm on that ride. See you (and your ourquers de vache) there.
Excellent !
(Ourquers ?? Wassat ?)
Ourquers de vache. De vache, cow related. Being Frenchish, the adjective and noun are reversed. Thus ourquers de vache becomes cow ourquers, or co-workers. It's a shedde thing. I expect you're pleased you asked
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Aha ! Thank you. I hadn't applied the accent to get there. :-)
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It looks like a decent bike, with only 2 minor drawbacks - "puncture proof tyres" are almost certainly crap, and they come only in sizes 57cm and 52cm. I guess, if you want bicycle as a service then punctures break the model, but...
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One of the ones at work has (I think) Schwalbe Lugano Endurance tyres on it.
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I live in zone 2 and have a 12 speed Brompton. This may upset the dataset.
My avatar is me doing an actual cyclocross race on mine*. With the mudguards on. And not for the first time. In sticky conditions the chain tensioner clogs long before the mudguards do.
(* on a motocross course in zone 8)
Tell me more.
What tyres did you use? I'm wondering how race control would be about me turning up with my winter spiked tyres... they at least have some tread to them...
J
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What tyres did you use? I'm wondering how race control would be about me turning up with my winter spiked tyres... they at least have some tread to them...
Just the standard marathons. They work fine on most surfaces. Raleigh Records are available in Brompton sizes and have knobblies, though I don't think they'd help much in proper mud.
It was an "anything goes" fun race before the more serious race. I did it on an original Bickerton the following year, although sadly no photographer...
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3-speed's fine if you're not venturing beyond about *handwaves* Zone 3.
*ponders*
I've just realised the TFL zones in fact denote the optimum number of gears you need on a bike in that area. That's genius. It also explains why Bromptons come with up to 6 gears as standard (with those living in the further reaches of the Metropolitan line requiring a visit to Kinetics), and why areas where serious gearing is needed (Wales, Yorkshire, The Alps) don't recognise your Oyster card.
I've used a Santander bike, I found I only needed one gear in central London (the biggest one) but were I venturing to Hampstead (zone 2) I think I'd need more than 2
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I confess I only use the most-spinny of the six gears to get up that 25% hill and up the driveway. There's another couple of hills (I mostly come over Crystal Palace for instance) that don't require that. I'm not sure if that's because I'm awesome or slow. I think my Brompton commute is a tad atypical though.