London’s “boris bikes” lack a certain something

I decided to try out London’s Barclays Cycle Hire, known colloqually as “Boris bikes”, yesterday. There are 6,000 bicycles distributed across central London that you can hire on an ad-hoc basis.

While the scheme is a great concept, for the casual user it lacks something – information on using the bikes! Where user information is provided (on the Transport for London web site and on the payment ticket, for example), it’s pretty good:

However, I couldn’t find any information on how to book and return a bike on the docking station terminals themselves. The terminals are where the casual user pays for the hiring of a bike and receives the code for releasing a bike from its clamp:

A little bit of information at the docking station terminal itself would, I’m sure, encourage even more people to use this valuable and worthy service.