New car-sharing clubs / car microhire.

The Evening Standard mentioned www.drive-now.com and www.go-drive.com. The former operates in Hackney, Haringey, Islington and Waltham Forest boroughs and the latter currently only has cars in central London. Both are offering electric cars - the former BMW i3s and the latter Ford Focuses.

Go-drive offers free membership, which is good as there's no incentive to use the cars just to get money's worth, and it doesn't add to the cost of being in more than one car club / hire scheme to get the flexibility. Drive-now asks for a one off joining fee of £29 currently - no annual renewal.

Go-drive uses designated parking places for the cars, but you can return the car to any free one. It seems that the cars can only be hired 15 minutes in advance. This is pitched as no need to plan in advance, but if you want a car at a specific time it could be a bit annoying.

Drive-now does not have designated parking places and does allow you to pin a car down for up to 8 hours, though you have to pay for that. That's a downside of the park it anywhere operational model.

Each of the systems has its own app, but we can hope that some whizz-kid can come up with an app that works on all the cars in schemes that one is a member of. It seems likely that hirers will want a nearby car, rather than a specific club's car and a lot of the time they are not going to care what model of car it is.

Barking Halfords has closed

People in the cycling world have mixed feelings about Halfords, but for years it has been all Barking has had that could be described as a bike shop. Now, the Abbey Retail Park is being redeveloped and Halfords is closed. I remember when they had a shop in East Street.

https://goo.gl/maps/Aizl8

A little piece of local cycling history?

The signage in William St quarter (Anne Mews, King's Rd, Linton Rd, William St) has (largely) been corrected. (When originally installed it did not take into account that the one way restrictions did not apply to pedal cyclists.)

So, along with the fairly recently permitted "except cyclists" plates qualifying no-entry signs, at the other end of the road, signs (960.2 I believe) have been fitted that indicate contra-flow cycling (not a term I like, as cycling is "flow" too) without a lane.

These are surely a first in Barking & Dagenham. I haven't seen the in real life in this country, but that's not saying much.

Here are some photos of the signs in situ. I still think one or two of the signs are in error and I hope the council will correct this very soon.

Junction of Linton Rd and William Street

 Junction of King's Rd and Anne Mews

Junction of William St and King's Rd

As above, facing North St. The sign is wrong as the stretch of road is not one way for cycling - see below.

 The entrance to Kings Rd from North St. No entry except cycles means the road is not one way for cycling.

The entrance to Anne Mews from Linton Rd. The one way sign on the right is wrong. It should match the sign on the left. Not sure why the road is marked as a no through road.

Barking's hidden cycle storage

Take a look at the upper floor of the building containing the dentists in this view https://goo.gl/maps/ZvmRQ. I think these are the bike racks of building 5, as it's referred to in the travel plan helpfully sent to me by a potential resident. There are 233 of them according to the travel plan.

Go down the black and white path alongside the building and you will see an unmarked door leading to a stairs, secured by some kind of electronic lock.

Photos:

Next take a trip to Axe St and go down the service road next to the white block of flats - no 87 Axe St or "building 4". On the left you will see a low white building secured by a gate. I believe this is a bike store - capacity 40 according to the travel plan, though it looks like it's being used for rubbish.

Photos:

It seems to me that residents do not know about these facilities. They should be bought into use either for residents or for local workers, or even anyone who wants to use one.