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Casual use on London's £140m cycle hire scheme has been postponed once again as "teething problems" continue to hit the service. Unregistered users will have to wait until mid September to swipe, pay and pick up a bike nearly two months since it was launched. 100,000 journeys have been made so far; City Hall said the take-up had "exceeded its wildest expectations." 45,000 have signed up for the year. Fewer bikes and docking stations mean the roll-out will miss the summer tourist season and transport chiefs are already struggling with the logistical and technical foul-ups tainting the project. As well as overcharging 1000s, users are encountering docking stations not releasing bikes and freeing space for others to be returned, shortages of bikes at main stations, an overloaded call centre and frozen accounts, so they cannot hire a bike. The situation at Waterloo is particularly bad. Project director Alan Stannard, of contactors Serco, blamed software failures and apologised saying 40 full-time staff were working round the clock moving bikes around the capital. London Transport Commissioner Peter Hendy warned, as the scheme went live on July 30, that there would be "no excuses for further slip-ups". "They can't even cope as it is" Kulveer Ranger, the Mayor's transport adviser, said: “Probably the first couple of weeks of September is what we are looking at. We always knew there would be a few teething problems and that is what we are working through.” London Cyclist founder Andreas Kambanis said: "It comes as a bit of a shock that there is yet another delay. It's a hit to the scheme as there are people out there who want to give it a go. The more it's delayed, the less likely they are to jump on board. Considering they can't even cope with the number of users so far, it would be a bit irresponsible of them to open the scheme to anybody."
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