"Dream machines" and "daily drivers" - what's the best bike?

As part of a move away from expensive (bad for the wallet), imported (bad for the national balance of trades - the "national wallet"), polluting (bad for the environment, and the air we ourselves have to breathe) forms of transport, folk tend to think about getting a bicycle.

So, the obvious question is: what bike is the "best"?

Answer: Depends what you want to do with it!

It is easy to flick through web pages of exotic, expensive cycles, and form the impression that the more one pays

Boris Bikes, a look at a cycle hire scheme in a very large city

It is easy to list this problem or that problem with the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme (aka Boris Bikes).
In summary, the main issues appear to be:

• expensive to set up and operate
• limited scope of the scheme - there are only docking points in a fairly central area of London, and a few inner surrounding districts, and the hire charges make it prohibitively expensive to do much more than cycle from one docking station to another.
• issues about bikes to hire being in the right places
• issues about docks to park bikes being full
• not aimed at the under 14s, and thus making the scheme unattractive to families with children under that age who might travel to London for a day out (like our family, for example!)

However, the scheme also has many good points: