“Its a long term investment, might never see a return just like the railways hve never shown a true positive return and yet are entirely necessary”

Not true. It has been, and still is, perfectly possible to make a valid and positive business case for a railway line. Its just been done for HS2. But it is only possible if the benefits really do add up and the scheme isn’t being done on a political whim.

“And like any well funded government scheme regardless of party, it’s gone over budget and over time to deliver…”

Not true either. There are plenty of examples of large, well planned and managed projects in the public sector, especially in London. The East London Line Extension was delivered on budget and early, similarly the upgrade of the Victoria line by TfL is also on time and on budget. Both of these were signficantly larger than the cycle hire scheme. Contrast this, by the way, with the shambles that the private sector left on the Jubilee line as a result of PPP. Projects in the public sector are not subject to different rules than those in the private sector. If they are well specified and managed they will be successful, if they are not they will start to go wrong almost immediately. This has gone over budget precisely because its badly conceived, poorly implemented and more than anything rushed to try and give the impression that Boris was doing something.

“…people are using it day in day out, just see it everyday”

Not in doubt but also beside the point. There no evaluation that doing something else with what’s now £109M wouldn’t have produced something that even more people would have used every day. This is in addition to this being a massive broken promise from the blond-buffoon – he said the scheme would be implemented at “no cost to the taxpayer”.

“Have a look at what Ken spent on GLAs new website before he left office. Nothing went live. Remind me what we paid for there precisely?

Surely even you must conceed this is a pretty weak argument? I’ve no idea what he spent on the GLA website before he left although I’ll wager the delta between that figure and £109M is massive, so you need to get a sense of proportion. In any case trying to claim we should waste some more money now because at some point back in 2008 some was wasted doesn’t really stand up to any level of scrutiny.

The advice is here: http://www.dft.gov.uk/webtag/documents/expert/unit3.14.php

I urge you to read table 12.

My point that low BCR schemes have still been given the go ahead is not a defence of bad policy making. In the end, whether a transport scheme goes ahead is based in part but not in full, on the BCR. There are masses of non-monetised costs which are left out. Rather bizarrely in this case they left out the road safety objective entirely.

Heseltine clearly saw that the models which spat out a 0.95:1 figure for the JLE were garbage. Specifically they failed to take into account the huge agglomeration benefits of linking Canary Wharf with the rest of London.

As I said above, I believe that the CHS is having a transformative effect on transport culture in London, an incalculable benefit. (Essentially, lots of new people are being introduced to cycling in central London).

Another non-monetised benefit is the value of removing several thousand tube and bus trips a day from a massively congested system. These are only deemed as beneficial in terms of time savings to the individuals – the benefits to London in delaying investment in improved public transport are likely to be far greater.

I completely agree with you that BCRs of 1.26:1 (or 0.8:1) are low, and if costs are higher than first thought then obviously the BCR will be lower still. However I strongly believe that the scheme will actually garner far higher benefits than suggested by the very crude transport appraisal process we have. In the meantime, hoops must be jumped through.

Firstly its not me that’s ditching the health benefits. If you look at the BC you’ll note that TfL only use them as part of the sensitivity analysis. They aren’t usually taken account of in their business case model, so its wrong to do it here. I had to laugh when you accuse me of making “make it up as you go along to prove your point.” when that’s precisely what you (and the proponents of cycle hire) have done by using a factor that not usually considered as part of the BC. I’m completely consistent – we should treat cycle hire in exactly the same way as we do any other transport scheme in London.

Secondly you’ve tried to make your case by using a weak argument that effectively says we’ve thrown sanity out the window previously by ignoring the ROI of a transport scheme, so we should do it again. I’ve no idea whether the ROI for the Jubilee Line extension was in fact 0.95:1, but two wrongs don’t make a right generally speaking. But I think its worse now than then anyway – we have much less money to go around and therefore the pressure to make sure its spent to the best effect is much greater. We’ve flunked that test here.

Transport economics is the most dismal aspect of this dismal science. But you can’t just make it up as you go along to prove your point.

In any case, there are plenty of large schemes that have been given the thumbs up even if their BCRs were very low. IIRC the Jubilee Line Extension was 0.95:1, yet it was given the go ahead (by Heseltine). He realised, just as the London people do now, that there are lots of non-monetised benefits of the scheme that outweigh its costs. I believe the Cycle Hire scheme is having a transformative effect on cycling’s image in London, and will prove highly cost effective.

Will that make a substantial different to the operation of the scheme? Unlikely, given where the problems are. A 20% increase in bikes will still not bring it anywhere close to the level required to service the rail after-market (50,000), and it is this pattern of usage that is currently causing the scheme to buckle at the morning and evening peaks.

On the benefits (or otherwise) of new rolling stock. There are two pieces to that, I guess. Firstly should there be a proper business case and environmental analysis of any transport project and if it doesn’t stack up the project cancelled? Absolutely. Is that a reason that the cycle hire scheme should be given a free pass Certainly not. I’m just trying to bring the same rigour to this that we should be having with any project.

Rather then questioning the benefit of Boris Bikes, I’d be questioning the cost, environmental impacts and benefits of air conditioning on trains.