London cycle scheme to expand across East London

Tower Hamlets, Bethnal Green, Bow and Poplar among areas to get hire bikes and docking stations.

Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme is to be extended to include a large area of East London by 2012.

The cycle hire area will be extended beyond central London to include all of the Borough of Tower Hamlets as well as north Shoreditch in the Borough of Hackney and Bethnal Green, Bow, Canary Wharf, Mile End and Poplar.



Altogether, 2,000 more cycles and 4,200 extra docking points will be installed across the existing and new Barclays Cycle Hire area.

When complete, around 8,000 hire bikes will be available from 14,400 docking points at hundreds of locations across central and East London.

There have been more than 1.5 million journeys in the three months since the scheme was launched.



Deanna Oppenheimer, Vice-Chair, Global Retail Banking, CEO Western Europe and CEO UK Retail Banking at Barclays, said: "The scheme is having a profound social and economic effect on London, and the expansion will see more people able to benefit from it."

"This may be improvements to their health, being more productive at work or making cost savings on a cheap and sustainable mode of transport."

Further information:
Greater London Authority