Santander Cycles

The Santander Cycle Scheme is a website and application that provides a bike sharing service. Visitors in London can hire bikes using London's public cycle hire scheme: Santander Cycles. Santander is a Spanish bank that sponsored this cycle program in collaboration with the ‘Transport for London’ (tfl). There are more than 750 docking stations and 11,500 bikes to hire around London. It costs £2 to access a Santander Cycles bike for 24 hours; the first 30 minutes of each journey are free. Bikes can be hired using a bank card at the docking station, or using the official app.

Geospatial and transportation open data is used to connect people with available bikes through the application of the tfl. Geospatial open data offers maps of the surrounding and widely used transportation routes in the city. In this manner, Santander Cycles can make sure their bicycles are available in all highly used transportation routes.

Government officials can choose to fund and set up a cycling program as it offers many benefits and are suitable for a post-lockdown society. For example, cycling improves overall health and reduces pollution. Also, existing infrastructure can be used for cyclists. On top of that, bikes offer a relatively affordable way of transportation for many people.

Santander Cyclesis one of the over 600 use cases published on the European Data Portal. If you are aware of another inspiring use case, share your experience and knowledge on different applications and websites using open data with the EDP via mail, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.