Video: Boris Bike Bombing

 @torstenfrost

the bikes are super solid, made by Devinci in their plant near Quebec. Kinda rad to think the same guys making the Devinci Wilson are making the "Boris Bike"

Here is an old photo of my Dixon just before TFL dropped the first Boris Bikes into the city.

ep1.pinkbike.org/p4pb5318701/p4pb5318701.jpg

Really difficult design to get right for super abusive daily rental use whilst being theft resistant. The design team made 100+ changes from the Bixi bikes (Toronto) and Velo bikes (Paris) before they finished the design for the London hire bike.

One of the big changes was moving the locking mechanism into the bike hire stand, as many of the Velo bikes in Paris got stolen due to the weak lock on the bicycle itself.

 my Hectik, not my Dixon..but you get the idea.

 Bike Sharing Systems rock! Every bigger city should have one! In fact, riding these ridiculous citybikes can be pretty enjoyable.

 Great bikes but a round of applause must go to the Muppets at TFL for awarding the contract to Devinci. No offence to Devinci, but couldn't the British government spend the British taxpayer's money more appropriately and get a British company to do it? One thing to love about Taiwan is that they try to promote and protect local industry. Do you know the skinny, Hampsteadbandit? Did any UK companies tender?

 To be fair there aren't too many UK bike companies that have the equipment to build such a large volume of bikes, they'd probably outsource the contract to Taiwan. I quite like the that they're made in Canada eh.
Nice background there @hampsteadbandit, they certainly do a good job on them!

 I know the story about tfl and the Boris bikes (or 'ken' bikes really...) As I was working for devincis UK distributor.

Tfl did put it all out to tender and brompton amongst others in the UK (very few left unfortunately) could not put a competitive bid forwards due to scale of production and the design requiring aluminium alloy construction. Brompton have been having issues meeting huge demand for their folding bikes, let alone taking on contract work! The legal contract devinci signed was 400 pages long.

Devinci should be applauded for being a domestic manufacturer, albeit not based in the UK, but i'm half Canadian so I'm proud of Canadian companies. I heard devinci could produce 400 hire bikes a week in addition to their own models, which gives some idea of their scale as a fabrication plant.

 That was awesome.

 agreed the reggae rider is the winner.

 at least he's having fun

 True but just because you're a pro and having fun doesn't mean it deserves a spot on the homepage. There are a lot of banger edits on here that will never get noticed, while a video of pros pedalling around a city on rental bike does.

 I don't think we watched the same edit, that was gnarly to the extreme! That skid.. and those BUBBLES!

 Thanks for making my day, freeride-forever. Its not everyday you see a grown adult who cares about something so meaningless as a rating system for posts on a bike website.

 wonder what kind of tune he could get out of one - that would be interesting to see!